Mental Health Inequities among Transgender People in Aotearoa New Zealand: Findings from the Counting Ourselves Survey.

Kyle K H Tan,Jack L Byrne,Johanna M Schmidt,Sonja J Ellis,Jaimie F Veale

doi:10.3390/ijerph17082862

Kyle K H Tan, Jack L Byrne + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17082862

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Abstract

There has been little international research looking at differences in mental health across different age groups. This study examines mental health inequities between transgender people and the Aotearoa/New Zealand general population from youth to older adulthood. The 2018 Counting Ourselves survey (N = 1178) assessed participants’ mental health using the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) and diagnoses of depression and anxiety disorders, questions that were the same as those used in the New Zealand Health Survey. Our results showed significant mean score differences for transgender people on K10, and these differences were almost two standard deviations higher than the general population (Cohen’s d = 1.87). The effect size differences, however, decreased from youth to older adults. Regression analyses indicated trans women were less likely to report psychological distress than trans men and non-binary participants. There was an interaction effect for age and gender, with lower psychological distress scores found for younger trans women but higher scores for older trans women. The stark mental health inequities faced by transgender people, especially youth, demonstrate an urgent need to improve the mental health and wellbeing of this population by implementing inclusive institutional practices to protect them from gender minority stress.

Highlights

Transgender people are those whose gender does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth
Considerable differences were found for rates of being diagnosed with a mental health disorder, with participants having almost three times the risk of reporting a lifetime depression diagnosis and a more than five times greater risk of reporting an anxiety disorder diagnosis
While our study has identified age as an important demographic factor in predicting transgender people’s mental health, we could not be certain whether the mental health differences across age groups represented changes as this population grew older, their development of the ability to cope with gender minority stressors later in life, or whether they were the result of historical and social contexts that occurred for specific age groups

Summary

Introduction

Transgender (or trans) people are those whose gender does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. We use transgender as an umbrella term to encompass trans men (those who identify as men but were assigned female at birth), trans women (those who identify as women but were assigned male at birth), and non-binary people (those whose gender is neither man nor woman) [1]. These broad descriptions include identities formed in both Western and non-Western cultural contexts. Māori terms that encompass gender diversity include whakawahine, takatāpui, and tangata ira tāne [2].

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