Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
New researchSelf-Harm and Suicidality in Children Referred for Gender Dysphoria
Section snippets
Participants
The probands consisted of 572 gender-referred children (463 natal boys; 109 natal girls) and 425 of their siblings (239 boys, 186 girls), who ranged in age from 3 to 12 years, and for whom at least 1 parent had completed the CBCL for children 4 to 18 years of age.27 All of the gender-referred children were evaluated in a specialized gender identity service housed within a child and youth mental health program at an academic health science center between 1976 and 2015 (mean year of assessment,
Results
Because the 2001 version of the CBCL did not include data on referred and nonreferred children under the age of 6 years, our comparative analyses described below did not include the data on the gender-referred children and siblings who were under the age of 6 years.
Discussion
Based on parent report, this study examined the prevalence of both suicidal ideation and self-harm/suicidal behavior in a sample of children referred for gender identity concerns and compared these rates to those of their siblings, referred, and nonreferred children. The referred children in the CBCL standardization sample had, on average, a significantly higher suicidality sum score than the gender-referred children, but both groups had a significantly higher score than the siblings of the
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This article is discussed in an editorial by Dr. Walter O. Bockting on page 441.
Dr. VanderLaan was supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research postdoctoral fellowship.
Disclosure: Drs. VanderLaan, Wasserman, Zucker, and Mss. Aitken and Stojanovski report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.