Attempted Suicide Rates More Than Double After Gender-Reassignment Surgery: Study

Anecdotal rhetorical question:

If there is a correlation between aluminum adjuvant type vaccines and autism, as seems to be the case, and if there is correlation between autism and gender dysphoria as some claim, could it be that the widespread gender dysphoria in these times is also related to vaccines?

 

There is some evidence for the latter claim. The other has been nuked into oblivion with debunking. There is no evidence for it. So the answer is "no." There is no reason to think vaccines are linked to transgenderism.

 

Yet here you are

 

If the question is whether doing this surgery makes outcomes better or worse, then the study design is problematic. You don't compare them to the general population, you compare them to people in the same situation who did not get the surgery. And also, it is completely expected that suicide rates right after a change, any change positive or negative, would spike. That is the nature of suicide. But the actual rate we're concerned about is lifetime risk of suicide. This study design cannot answer the question you think it does.

I'm not necessarily knocking the study, but more its misinterpretation. The authors suggest their aim is to call attention to this to improve after-surgery care, "should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group."

 

Yeah, neither study was meant to address that at all. One was relating the data for the group but made no conclusions. It obviously was never intended to be statistically significant and to be extrapolated to the broader population. If it were, it would only show an increase in about 3% of the trans population after surgery, and among those only among those who were pursuing surgery in the first place. The author of the second study has explicitly stated that this wasn't the purpose of her study and that, in fact, her data shows that, after 1989, the trend disappeared entirely.

 

I agree that it should not be compared to a general population in order to determine suicide risk associated with surgery.

With that being said, this exact concept applies to studies pointing to suicide risk in order to justify the need for surgery. They do the same thing and compare it to a general population cohort. I have yet to see a study that compares trans w/o to trans with surgery in terms of suicide risk.

I suspect those rates are likely very similar for the non surgical and surgical group. I think it is the trans aspect and accompanying rates of clinical depression that drives this rate, not surgery or lack of surgery.

 

Judging from what we've seen so far, there is no evidence that surgery increases risk of suicide among trans people. Of the two studies in the OP article, one wasn't statistically significant and one found that this USED to be the case, but the trend stopped in 1989. After that, there was no significant increase in risk.

 

I just got done saying that the OP study should not be comparing suicide risk post-surgery to a general population if they want to determine suicide risk associated with surgery.

 

I'm not sure I get what you are saying. You mean the general population of trans people?

 

General population in this context is meant to refer to a random sample of everyone, not just trans.

 

But that wouldn't make any sense. If we were testing a diabetes medication for addressing kidney damage, we wouldn't compare the results to the general population, who has a lower risk of kidney damage in the first place. If the medication cut kidney complications in half, but if the patients still have higher rates of kidney problems than the rest of the population, your study design would indicate that the medication somehow caused a higher risk of kidney complications.

 

Which is precisely why I said it should NOT be done.

We are in agreement here. There is nothing to argue.

 

I honestly never got a chance before this to look at those studies. I was bringing up questions for people to think about in trying to analyze the studies themselves. I'm not trying to make any assertion on your claims.

I did promise you links. And if you are holding the position that it seems you are, then you should appreciate some of the data there.

More than 2/3 who got some kind of surgery had a reduction in suicidal ideation. That's a significant amount of improvement.

As can be seen here, external sources of suicide have to be accounted for. These are some of the reasons suicide is so high among transgenders. It's not being transgender itself. Which also means that if surgery alone can have such a significant drop in suicide rates, image what managing to drops harassment and assault will do for dropping suicide rates.

All the more reason to make sure the cause of suicide by a transgender is related to being transgender. Because only an idiot would think that there wasn't other factors that could cause suicide.

Oh and for those who want to talk about all those who detransitioned:

Seems like detransitioning is a cause for suicide, at least by the logic being presented as to why transgenders should not transition in the first place. Nearly twice the amount of people who de-transitioned showed suicidal ideation than those who remained transitioned.

So while the suicide rate of post transitioning transgenders might be higher than the general population average, they are still way lower than the rates among the pre transitioning or those in the beginning stages. Which means that transitioning works.

 

Correlation is not automatically causation. We could show a correlating rise in internet use and GD, but that doesn't mean that the internet causes GD. Not to mention a rise in reporting doesn't not equate a rise in occurrence.

 

Given that those who are not transgender do not transition, I'm not sure how you compare the rate of transgender after reassignment with those of non transgenders after reassignment. That said, it does not double. It actually goes down. See my links above.

Minors don't typically go under the knife. This is a falsehood that most opponents keep trying to perpetuate as an emotional ploy.

 

It should also include a comparison of the different types of transitioning, and not just the surgery. For some people, simply presenting, with no surgery or hormones, is enough to alleviate the GD. For some it's just top surgery/hormones to achieve that goal. There is a range of treatments under transitioning, not just the full GCS.

Now you have. See the first link in my above post.

The second link above goes into that, noting what other factors might cause suicide other than the GD itself.

 

It may not make sense to do that, but that is exactly how transgender opponents stack their numbers in order to try to make their point. They compare the overall rate of suicide of transgender people, both pre-op and post-op, and compare that to the general overall population. I've had to make that exact same point to them every time they bring up one of those studies that do such a comparison.

 

Perhaps telling people they were born defective and require drugs and surgery to "fix" is not good for one's self-confidence and happiness. To think that people that took an oath to do no harm would tell patients that their thought were the result of having the wrong body parts. Sad,

 

How are trans people persecuted?

 

The article in the OP is a lie.

 

Suicidal ideation is obviously not the same thing as suicide. It is self-reported, subjective and thus not all that reliable. That is like trying to draw conclusions from self reported pain scores which is a common dilemma in the pain world. Self reported scores are notoriously subjective and given less credence as a result. One very important aspect of well designed studies is a consistent "rater" of outcomes. Self-reported outcomes are the very opposite of such.

If you want to make the claim of less suicide, you truly do need clinical proof of less suicide. Suicidal ideation does not suffice. I called out the over-reaching claims from the Op and I am similarly calling out this over-reaching claim. What you report is perhaps closer to being a valid claim than the OP, but it still falls short for scientifically determining actual suicide risk.

BTW, I tried clicking on your link to see the actual study, but unless I did something wrong, it seems to be gone from that source.

 

You do realize that the Hippocratic Oath is neither legally binding, nor universally used, right? It's more a TV trope than actually used. Further here is the current version of that oath:

It has been changed many times over the centuries, not to mentions others that are used, if one is used at all.

 

Attempting to deprive an individual of the personal freedom to seek needed medical care is to persecute that individual.

(persecute: to hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of their ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation or their political beliefs)

Surely, you are not in blanket denial, in spite of the overwhelming documentation.

Most LGBTQ Americans experience harassment, discrimination

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If you go back and read, you'll see they included both thoughts and attempts. And while I understand your hesitancy in such self reporting, for some things, self reporting is the only thing that we can use. Take depression for example. We can only track emotions via self reporting, because only the person knows what they are actually feeling. Many a person who presents to the outer world as happy, is actually sad or depressed.

You would probably have to copy and paste the links. In editing them in the quote blocks as I did, I don't think they translated as links. All three articles were still there when I did the copy and paste thing.

 

Nope. I've never heard of any legislature trying to interfere with this I'm not sure they even can.

You don't have the right to politeness.

You didn't list any real persecution just made up crap.

Well LGBT contains a lot more than just trans people so trying to suggest a lesbian experiencing harassment is somehow a trans person receiving the same doesn't work.

Let's not expand categories to increase numbers. Let's leave the LGB out of it and focus just in the T because that's what this is about.