AMHERST — Take a controversial form of medical care away, new research finds, and transgender teens are more likely to die by suicide.
At a time when states across the country are restricting access to “gender-affirming care,” a research project guided in part by a University of Massachusetts economist dug into data from the largest survey ever conducted of transgender people.
The findings support the belief among medical doctors that care should be available to young people contending with a mismatch between their assigned sex at birth and what they believe to be their true gender, according to Duc Hien Nguyen, a doctoral student in economics at UMass.
“It is important to keep adding to this body of scientific evidence,” Nguyen, 31, said in a phone interview from his home in Toronto.
Using data from the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, Nguyen and the research team determined that the availability of hormone replacement therapy, one of the now-controversial treatments, is associated with a 14.4% decrease in the risk of attempted suicide by young people aged 14 to 17 who face what’s known as gender dysphoria.
The study found that access to hormone replacement therapy had the greatest benefit in preventing suicide attempts when started by the age of 14 or 15.
Absent from the survey, Nguyen noted, were teens who had already taken their lives.
“It’s very troubling for me personally, as well as researchers in general,” Nguyen said. “We don’t really know the people who successfully attempted suicide. They never got the chance to be part of this survey.”
The study found no statistically significant connection between the use of hormone replacement therapy and the risk of suicide attempts among transgender adults.
At least 20 states have laws that restrict gender-affirming care for young people. Another eight states, according to UMass, are considering such legislation.
Nguyen expressed hope that a growing body of research on the subject will be recognized by lawmakers. “I don’t know how much power one single finding has. It did affirm what medical doctors know.”
That medical view, Nguyen said, is that gender-affirming care should be accessible to young people who seek it.
The group’s work, titled “Hormone Therapy, Suicidal Risk and Transgender Youth in the United States,” appears in the American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings. Other authors of the study are Travis Campbell of Southern Oregon University (who earned his doctorate at UMass in 2022), Samuel Mann of Vanderbilt University and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers of Rutgers University.
Nguyen and other researchers will soon release a report in the American Journal of Public Health that compares mental health outcomes, in various states, among young people seeking gender-affirming care.
“We’re motivated by the political landscape,” Nguyen said of the research.
It remains to be seen, he acknowledged, whether policymakers will consider the science.
“I have hope that they will,” Nguyen said. He expects to complete his UMass Ph.D. next summer. After time spent living in Amherst, he lives now in Canada to pursue field work.
Meantime, young people with new beliefs and experiences are broadening public discussions. “It’s more difficult to ignore,” Nguyen said. “Young people are claiming their gender identity beyond the binary.”