Study establishes first causal link between anti-trans laws and suicide attempts

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State laws targeting transgender people made trans and nonbinary young people more likely to  suicide attempts in the past year, according to a first-of-its-kind study.

The research, published last week in the journal Nature Human Behavior and conducted by the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, is the first to establish that such laws directly caused an increase in suicide attempts.

The Trevor Project surveyed more than 60,000 trans and nonbinary young people (ages 13-24) about their mental health from 2018 to 2022, a period in which 19 state governments enacted 48 laws targeting trans people, particularly youth. These included restrictions on transition-related care for minors and laws that bar trans student athletes from playing on the school sports teams that align with their gender identities.

The study compared suicide-related outcomes for trans and nonbinary young people in those 19 states to the outcomes for trans and nonbinary youth in states that did not enact any such laws.

It found that these laws caused an increase in suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth by an estimated 7% to 72%. The range of estimates is large because it includes the percent increase for five time periods from 2018 to 2022, and the estimated percent increase differs depending on time period and the age range of participants.

“That causation is the key aspect,” said Ronita Nath, one of the co-authors of the study and vice president of research at the Trevor Project. “State-level anti-transgender laws caused — so, not associated with, not linked to — we can say very confidently, they caused up to a 72% increase in number of past-year suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary young people,” as well as a 49% increase in the percent of trans and nonbinary young people who made at least one attempt in the past year.

She said past research has established that laws targeting trans people are associated with worse mental health outcomes for trans and nonbinary people, including youth.

Dr. Jack Turban, child psychiatrist and director of the gender psychiatry program at the University of California San Francisco, said this study is significant because its design, known as a causal inference technique, provides strong evidence that the laws are causing suicide attempts versus only showing an association between the laws and an increase in suicide.

He added that causal link is important as the Supreme Court prepares to hear U.S. v. Skrmetti, its first case considering a ban on transition-related care for trans minors.

“When doing those legal analyses, one of the questions is whether or not the states have a reasonable interest in banning these treatments or in passing these laws,” said Turban, who is also the author of “Free to Be: Understanding Kids and Gender Identity.”

He added, “Since we have evidence that these laws are driving suicide attempts, it would be really difficult to argue that states are justified or have a compelling reason to pass these kind of laws.”

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