Anti-trans laws fueled a spike in suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth

A transgender Pride flag features the names of transgender Black women from Louisiana who have been killed. The flag was carried at the front of a march Friday, March 31, 2023, through the French Quarter in New Orleans for Transgender Day of Visibility. (Greg LaRose/Louisiana Illuminator)

The number of suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth in states that passed anti-transgender laws increased by as much as 72% over five years, according to a study released on Thursday.

“It’s hard to digest,” said Dr. Ronita Nath, vice president of research at The Trevor Project, the LGBTQ+ suicide prevention organization that conducted the study. “We know from previous research that transgender/nonbinary people, they’re not inherently prone to increased suicide risk of their identities, but rather, they’re placed at higher risk because of how they’re mistreated and stigmatized by others, including by the implementation of discriminatory policies like the ones examined in this study.”

The report, released Thursday in the journal Nature Human Behavior, surveyed 61,000 trans and nonbinary people aged 13 to 24 between 2018 and 2022. While other studies had already found that access to gender-affirming care alleviates depression and risk of suicide in transgender and nonbinary youth, this is believed to be the first one to draw a connection between suicide attempts and anti-transgender legislation, which has flooded state houses and become a major talking point in this year’s presidential campaign. 

Researchers compared rates of suicide attempts among young people in states that passed anti-transgender laws with those that didn’t. They found that states that had passed at least one anti-trans law saw increases in suicide attempts ranging from 7% to 72% over the course of a single year. Across the full sample of surveyed youth, researchers saw a rise in suicide attempts between 38-44%.

“It is without question that anti-transgender policies, and the dangerous rhetoric surrounding them, take a measurable toll on the health and safety of transgender and nonbinary young people all across the country,” Jaymes Black, CEO at the Trevor Project, said in a statement.

Those most at risk were the youngest in the study. Kids ages 13-17 reported 33-49% higher rates of at least one suicide attempt over the course of a year, compared to young people over 18. According to the researchers, this is most likely because those young people have been denied gender-affirming medical care due to bans targeting minors. Young people over the age of 18 are also more likely to have access to LGBTQ+ community and resources, Nath said.

Youth of color also reported higher rates of suicide attempts, which Nath attributes to grappling with the stress of transphobia and racism, with laws targeting their gender identity and race-based bullying.

From 2018 to 2022, states passed 48 anti-transgender bills, limiting access for trans and nonbinary people to gender-affirming health care, restrooms, equal participation in sports, accurate identity documents and anti-discrimination protections.

Researchers noted that they found minimal evidence suggesting that COVID-19 increased suicide attempts among the youth surveyed, even though two of the years surveyed happened during the height of the pandemic.

But in the two years following the research, anti-trans policies only flourished, leading researchers to believe that trans youth mental health has further degraded. In 2023 and 2024, statehouses weighed 1,197 anti-transgender bills. Of those, 129 became law.

The study found that the mere introduction of anti-trans legislation did not have a noticeable impact on suicide attempts in states, though. It was the passage of those bills into laws that fueled attempts.

“For [transgender and nonbinary] young people, anti-transgender laws may signal a broader societal rejection of their identities, communicating that their identities and bodies are neither valid nor worthy of protection,” the report states.