TUESDAY, June 25, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Transgender (TGD) adults’ physical health, mental health, and health disparities worsened in the United States from 2014 to 2022, according to a research paper published online June 24. JAMA Internal Medicine.
Michael Liu of Harvard Medical School in Boston and his colleagues assessed recent trends in the physical and mental health of TGD adults in the United States based on data from 1.9 million people (0.57 percent of whom are transgender) participating in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
The researchers found that between 2014 and 2022, the proportion of TGD adults in poor or fair health increased from 26.6% to 35.1% (average annual change [AMC]1.33 percent) but decreased among cisgender adults (AMC, −0.19 percent). Gender identity was associated with significantly different health trends, indicating that the health gap between TGD and cisgender adults widened. Among TGD adults, the prevalence of frequent mental distress increased from 18.8 percent in 2014 to 38.9 percent in 2022 (AMC, 2.82 percent), while among cisgender adults it increased from 11.2 percent to 15.5 percent (AMC, 0.56 percent). For depression, the prevalence more than doubled among TGD adults from 19.7 percent to 51.3 percent (AMC, 3.63 percent), while cisgender adults saw a smaller increase (AMC, 0.39 percent). Overall, worsening mental health outcomes were significantly more pronounced among TGD adults compared to cisgender adults.
“Our findings highlight the need for the health care sector to follow established standards of care and promote policies that protect the health of TGD,” the authors wrote.
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