Parental Support and Mental Health Among Transgender Adolescents

Abstract

Purpose Family support is protective against health risks in sexual minority individuals. However, few studies have focused specifically on transgender youth, who often experience rejection, marginalization, and victimization that place them at risk for poor mental health. This study investigated the relationships among parental support, quality of life, and depression in transgender adolescents. Methods Sixty-six transgender youth presenting for care at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles completed a survey assessing parental support (defined as help, advice and confidante support), quality of life, and depression. Regression analyses assessed the associations between parental support and mental health outcomes. Results Parental support was significantly associated with higher life satisfaction, lower perceived burden of being transgender, and fewer depressive symptoms. Conclusions Parental support is associated with higher quality of life and is protective against depression in transgender adolescents. Interventions that promote parental support may significantly impact the mental health of transgender youth.

Harassment Patterns and Risk Profile in Spanish Trans Persons

“…The educational environment also registers a high percentage of harassment, 46.2%, which is much more than the 25% reported for primary, secondary, and higher education as a whole in Spain (Oñate & Piñuel, 2007). Although harassment drops to 31.1% within the family setting, these situations are probably even harder to determine considering the protective function trans persons assign their families regarding harassment (Simons, Schrager, Clark, Belzer, & Olson, 2013). However, this percentage is lower than the 66% in the United States, particularly in the city of Chicago (Kenagy & Bostwick, 2005).…”

Mental Health of Transgender Youth in Care at an Adolescent Urban Community Health Center: A Matched Retrospective Cohort Study

“…Another study conducted at Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles in California examined associations between quality of life measures and psychosocial factors among 66 youth age 12 to 24 with GID who received care between 2011 and 2012. Perceived burden–the extent to which transgender identity interferes with life activities or causes distress–was positively correlated with greater depression and negatively associated with self-reported life satisfaction 7 .…”

“…Clinical settings and EHR are particularly valuable for transgender health in light of the dearth of comparative data that exist to understand the health and wellbeing of transgender relative to cisgender patients. Only a small handful of studies using transgender youth patient data have been conducted in clinical settings in the U.S., and most of these have occurred in multidisciplinary gender clinics 7,14,15 . Spack and colleagues conducted a chart review study to explore characteristics of 97 children and adolescents age < 21 years (mean age=14.8; SD=3.4) with Gender Identity Disorder (GID) seen consecutively between 1998 and 2009 at a multidisciplinary gender clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts.…”

High perceived discrimination and no family support increase risk of poor quality of life in gender dysphoria

“…Family rejection of gender dysphoric individuals always occur, being only different in the type of rejection, from refusal to acknowledge them to refusal that leads to physical violence even to their being expelled from home. (26) Nemoto et al (27) stated that MtF gender dysphoric individuals who do not have family or social support have a greater suicide risk than those receiving social and family support. Weissman's (28) study reported that 54.8% of gender dysphoric individuals had high perceived discrimination.…”