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State-level anti-transgender laws increase past-year suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary young people in the USA

Nature Human Behaviour (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

From 2018 to 2022, 48 anti-transgender laws (that is, laws that restrict the rights of transgender and non-binary people) were enacted in the USA across 19 different state governments. In this study, we estimated the causal impact of state-level anti-transgender laws on suicide risk among transgender and non-binary (TGNB) young people aged 13–17 (n = 35,196) and aged 13–24 (n = 61,240) using a difference-in-differences research design. We found minimal evidence of an anticipatory effect in the time periods leading up to the enactment of the laws. However, starting in the first year after anti-transgender laws were enacted, there were statistically significant increases in rates of past-year suicide attempts among TGNB young people ages 13–17 in states that enacted anti-transgender laws, relative to states that did not, and for all TGNB young people beginning in the second year. Enacting state-level anti-transgender laws increased incidents of past-year suicide attempts among TGNB young people by 7–72%. Our findings highlight the need to consider the mental health impact of recent anti-transgender laws and to advance protective policies.

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Fig. 1: Effects of anti-transgender law on past-year suicide attempts.
Fig. 2: Effects of anti-transgender law on reporting of at least one past-year suicide attempt.
Fig. 3: Effects of anti-transgender law on reports of seriously considering suicide in the past year.
Fig. 4: Event study plot for placebo tests.

Data availability

Data are not publicly available because they contain information that could compromise research participant privacy. The data that support the findings of this study will be made available upon request, by contacting the corresponding author, only to accredited researchers who have received ethics approval from their institutions.

Code availability

The main analysis was conducted in Python 3.9.5 with packages such as pandas 1.4.2, statsmodels 0.13.2 and plotnine 0.10.1. Python code that supports the finding of this study is available from the corresponding author upon request, although restrictions may apply due to privacy reasons.

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Acknowledgements

The authors received no specific funding for this work. Full information on the sources of funding that support The Trevor Project, of which the authors are current or former employees, can be found at https://www.thetrevorproject.org/financial-reports/. We thank R. Baxter-King for methodological discussions and feedback on this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Trevor Project, West Hollywood, CA, USA

    Wilson Y. Lee, J. Nicholas Hobbs, Steven Hobaica, Jonah P. DeChants, Myeshia N. Price & Ronita Nath

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Contributions

W.Y.L. conceptualized the study and research design. W.Y.L. and J.N.H. conducted the analyses. W.Y.L., J.N.H. and S.H. drafted the article. M.N.P., J.P.D. and R.N. provided substantial feedback and revisions on the article. W.Y.L., S.H. and R.N. coordinated revisions and submission. All authors reviewed and approved this article before submission. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the article.

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Correspondence to Ronita Nath.

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Competing interests

The authors are current or former employees of The Trevor Project, which is a non-profit organization with 501(c)(3) status and Federal EIN 95-4681287. The Trevor Project provides crisis services for LGBTQ+ young people, along with research, education, public awareness and advocacy.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Tamar Goldenberg and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Lee, W.Y., Hobbs, J.N., Hobaica, S. et al. State-level anti-transgender laws increase past-year suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary young people in the USA. Nat Hum Behav (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01979-5

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