In the past, it has been found that a significant proportion of young people suffering from sexual anxiety have suicidal thoughts.
To transidentity and the suicide risk related to sexual anxiety has possibly been overestimated, states a Finnish research group in February In BMJ Mental Health in a published study.
The study looked at how common suicides have been among young Finnish people who have come to a gender identity clinic due to gender anxiety.
The result was that suicides are rare, but relatively slightly more than in the control group.
In more detail however, in the statistical analysis, the difference was not explained by gender anxiety, but by serious mental health problems, which were common among young people who applied to the clinics.
Almost three out of four had received psychiatric treatment in a specialized hospital. Mild mental health problems are treated elsewhere.
Suicidal mortality was predicted by a high number of psychiatric care events in specialized care. Gender anxiety did not increase the risk of suicide when the need for specialized psychiatric care was taken into account.
Other things too based on research, it is known that serious mental health disorders are connected to suicides.
However, the significance of psychiatric illness in the suicide mortality of young people suffering from sexual anxiety has not been studied before, says the author of the study, doctoral researcher and doctor specializing in youth psychiatry Sami-Matti Ruuska from the University of Tampere.
In previous studies, the effect of trans treatments on risk has also not been examined.
Rising number of young people in this millennium have applied for gender identity assessment at the university hospitals of Helsinki and Tampere due to gender dysphoria, i.e. gender anxiety.
Gender dysphoria is when a person experiences anxiety that his gender identity is not in harmony with his biological sex.
From the clinics, you can get a diagnosis of transgenderism and then proceed to hormone treatments and surgeries to change the body in the desired direction.
For research included all those under 23 who came to gender identity clinics between 1996 and 2019. There were 2,083 of them in total.
For each, eight young people of the same age, born in the same place, were selected as controls.
Statistics on diagnoses, causes of death and treatment visits were obtained from different registers.
By June 2022, 11 of the investigated group had died. Seven committed suicide. Of the 16,000 young people in the comparison group, 44 had died, of which 13 committed suicide. Thus, 0.3 percent of those with gender anxiety committed suicide, and 0.1 percent of the comparison group.
When mental health problems that required special medical treatment were taken into account, the suicide risk of those with sexual anxiety did not differ from the comparison group – not in those who received surgical or hormonal treatments, but also not in those who did not progress to treatment.
Previous studies have found that a significant proportion of young people suffering from sexual anxiety have suicidal thoughts. This is the justification for rushing Trans treatments.
However, suicidal thoughts are not the same as a real suicide risk, the researchers point out in their report.
“The results of the study do not support the claims that gender reassignment treatments are necessary to prevent suicides,” the researchers write. In order to prevent suicides, the most important thing is to identify and treat mental health disorders in young people.