A new study has shown that medical treatment for transgender youth can reduce the rates of self-harm and other mental health issues. The LGBTQ community has come a long way to be recognized and accepted into the world, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. This is especially true for youth who are developing and starting to understand their sexuality and identity. For transgender youth, this can mean a lot, and it could mean that they seek medical treatment to help them transition so that their outside matches what they feel on the inside.Transgender youth are also suffering with mental health issues, and work needs to be done to see how they can be helped. According to US News, a new study is showing that medical treatments for trans youth can cut the rates of depression and suicidal thoughts.The study was published in the journal, JAMA Network Open, and it can be read in full here. Researchers completed this study by tracking the mental health of 104 transgender and nonbinary children who were all between the ages of 13 and 20 years old.Over the course of a year, a third of the participants had received puberty blockers, gender-affirming hormone treatment or both. The remaining participants did not receive any medical treatment. When they followed the group, they saw that the individuals who had received treatment had a 60% drop in depression risk, and a 73% drop in suicidal thoughts on average. Diana Tordoff was the lead author on the study, and she stated that these findings are just adding the mounds of evidence they already have that accessing care is helping the mental health of these youth, and it is quite literally, saving their lives.
According to other recent data, there are about 150,000 American youth who are transgender, and this information can help a lot of them feel comfortable with who they are and this can help them feel better about themselves and about life. The study also found that those youths who did not receive medical treatment had an increase in depression and self-harm thoughts.
Parents of transgender children can sometimes be at a loss of what they can, or should, do for their child to support them. Studies like this show that the best thing to do for their health and wellbeing may be to have conversations with a medical doctor about what some options will be.
Sources: US News, JAMA Network Open