Mental healthcare is an important priority for transgender and gender nonconforming children, who may experience distress related to gender dysphoria, compounded by stress resulting from prejudice and discrimination. Existing literature on this population, mostly from small, specialized, clinic-based studies, has shown a high prevalence of mental health diagnoses and self-reported emotional and behavior problems among transgender and gender nonconforming youth, but the existing literature typically involves small sample sizes and lacks information on individuals who have either not sought or have had no access to care.
A new, large cohort study of transgender or gender nonconforming youth—the Study of Transition, Outcomes, and Gender (STRONG)1—showed that people who first presented as transgender or gender nonconforming before their 18th birthday have a higher prevalence of mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, and attention deficit disorders compared with cisgender counterparts.
STRONG, designed as an electronic medical record (EMR)-based retrospective and prospective cohort study of members at 3 Kaiser Permanente sites in Georgia, Northern California, and Southern California, in partnership with the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, identified a cohort of 588 transfeminine and 745 transmasculine children and adolescents, and each individual in the cohort was matched to 10 cisgender male or female children or adolescents. The researchers calculated the prevalence of mental health conditions for patients at any time in their lives and within 6 months of the index date (the date of first evidence of gender nonconforming status) among the transgender and gender nonconforming cohort, and compared the findings with those of the cisgender referents.
[For more on this story by Kelly Davio, go to http://www.ajmc.com/focus-of-t...tal-health-disorders]
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