Monmouth's Ask the Doctor January-February 2020

Nearly one in fifty U.S. teen students see themselves as transgender, CDC says By Lauren Kowlicki The CDC released its first report on trans questions for students and it showed that more than a third of those who identify as transgender have attempted suicide as well. Nearly one in 50 U.S. high school students considers them self-transgender, and more than a third of those say they at- tempted suicide in the previous year, according to the first study of its kind by a government agency. The report by the CDC, the government's leading health agency, found just under two percent of high school students said they were transgender, meaning their sense of gender identity did not align with their sex at birth. This is data that shows that there are so many transgender young people across the country, and it sends the message to transgender youth that they are not alone. Thirty-five percent of the transgender students said they had attempted suicide in the previous year, compared with about seven percent of those who did not see themselves as transgender, the CDC found. Those findings were similar to an analysis released last fall in JAMA Pediatrics, an influential journal, showing transgender youth were nearly six times as likely to attempt suicide as their heterosexual peers. The CDC said twice as many reported being bullied and roughly four times as many said they had been threatened or in- jured with a weapon at school and felt unsafe on their way to and from school. They were far more likely than non-transgender students to use cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and prescription opioids as well. The CDC said it added transgender-related questions in its most recent survey, conducted in 2017 among high school stu- dents in 10 states and nine large urban school districts.

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ASK THE DOCTOR

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020