by Leor Sapir, City Journal
A widely cited study claimed that “anti-transgender laws” encourage teen suicide attempts. A new review dismantles it.
A widely cited study claimed that “anti-transgender laws” encourage teen suicide attempts. A new review dismantles it.
In 2024, amid a wave of state legislation on transgender issues, the prestigious academic journal Nature Human Behavior (NHB) published a study titled “State-level anti-transgender laws increase past-year suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary young people in the USA.” The study claimed to find that passage of state “anti-transgender laws increased incidents of past-year suicide attempts” by as much as 72 percent.
Left-of-center media kicked into full gear, announcing that a study had found causal evidence that Republican-led laws are producing an epidemic of adolescent self-harm. “More trans teens attempted suicide after states passed anti-trans laws, a study shows,” blared NPR. Similar language appeared in the Washington Post, CNN, TIME,Scientific American, NBC, andThe Hill, as well as in the medical news outlets Medpage Today and Psychology Today.
It is not uncommon for researchers in gender medicine to exaggerate their findings and let allied media spin the rest. But in this case, the authors of the NHB study themselves promoted a narrative of cause and effect. “In this study,” wrote lead author Wilson Lee on LinkedIn, “we presented causal evidence that enacting state-level anti-transgender legislation increased suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary young people in the US.” Co-author Ronita Nath told CNN, “We’ve long known that the associations between anti-transgender policies and negative health outcomes for LGBTQ+ young people exist, but this is the first time any study has shown this causal relationship.”