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Comment by eanzenberg | Hacker News Reader

Don’t they have much higher suicide rates? How happy can that be?

Abused children also have high suicide rates, but that's presumably not because of some inherent internal tendency to suicide, right?

Not a question of inherent tendency but cause of. Those who have elected to adapt to their convictions through surgery, hormones, etc. still have very high suicide rates. The studies (I don’t have them handy) undermine the notion that the increased risk and incidence of suicide of “pre-transition” individuals with gender dysphoria are suicidal because they’re “forced” to live in a way that seems to then to be at odds with how they feel. But we find that “post-transition” we still see high rates. Some claim that this is because of the environment, but I believe that was also addressed and found unconvincing.

On the other hand, I have heard therapy for gender dysphoria (GD), such as that which addresses GD in children, can be highly effective in resolving whatever issues that are causing the confusion in the first place.

> But we find that “post-transition” we still see high rates

But lower than pre-transition.

> but I believe that was also addressed and found unconvincing.

I can't say I understand how a paper would account for systemic discrimination, but even if they did so successfully, treatments for most things don't have 100% rates of success.

> On the other hand, I have heard therapy for gender dysphoria (GD)

Yes, and this is normally part of treatment for GD for anyone. It just very often doesn't work.

41% meme aside, we really do not have good data for this yet imo, the life experience of someone who transitions at 25+ with little to no support and someone who never even went through the puberty of their birth gender and had a supporting family/school etc is so dramatically different

Post-transition transgender people have lower suicide rates and better mental health overall than those that are pre-transition[0].

[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24344788/

n = 57. You can't be serious, right?

How large should the sample be before it's substantive?

The British polling institute advises a sample of 1000 for a total UK population of around 60,000,000. Trans people make up 1% so roughly 600,000, with that in mind 57 doesn't seem that low?

Bigger than 57. Bad power is bad power whether or not it's the best you can get.

The required sample size doesn't depend on population size that much.

The appropriate comparison to judge the treatment is not "suicide rate in trans people vs in the general population" but "suicide rate in trans people vs in people who experience dysphoria but do not transition".

As a trans person that has started hormone therapy "late" ( I'm in my 40s), I can tell you I _feel_ much better since...

I know it's just one data point...

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