To put her issues in perspective, suicide rates for transgender individuals are around 45%.

It doesn't excuse her childish actions but it helps understand the burden and stress transgender individuals are constantly under.

> suicide rates for transgender individuals are around 45%.

If that were true, it would be alarming and possibly grounds for involuntary commitment based on someone being trans.

Fortunately it is not true.

Sorry, English isn't my primary language. What I meant by suicide rates is indeed attempted suicide.

It would be really scary if all of those succeeded.

I wouldn't dismiss unsuccessful suicides. Someone who doesn't succeed or turn back before committing isn't cured or any happier and may very well attempt again or live under a black cloud of depression and stress.

As for your comment on involuntary commitment, it makes no sense. There is a well known "cure" for gender dysphoria and it is gender transition. "after treatment, 26 (2.4%) of the MTF subjects and 7 (1.4%) of the FTM subjects still reported depression"[1]. According to this study, only 2.4% still report depression after transition. There are more studies reporting similar results, find them yourself.

[1] http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/827713

Edit: I've reread your post and your other post. I understand that your comment on involuntary commitment was meant if my mistake was true and the successful suicide rate was indeed 45%.

Being in a high risk group isn't grounds for involuntary commitment.

There is no group (including trans people) with such a "high risk" of suicide, outside of people who meet the criteria for involuntary commitment because they are at risk of suicide.

For one thing, that isn't true. People with certain mental illnesses and a history of suicide attempts have lifetime suicide rates in that range. More importantly, involuntarily committing someone for suicide risk requires evidence of suicidal behavior or thought.

*suicide _attempt_ rates

That's also self-reporting to the single question "have you ever attempted suicide?" without probing for an actual intent to die. In other surveys this has found to be about double the rate compared to when something would qualify as a suicide attempt to a mental health professional.

Do you have any sources?

This is the actual study that found the stat: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/AF...

This and other limitations are located in the aptly named "Methods and Limitations" section.

So even if we cut the 41% in half we still get 20%, which is much higher than the 4.6% (or 2.7%) of the general population.

The underlying facts are not controversial - being transgender puts someone at considerably higher risk of dying by suicide, of attempting suicide, and of having suicidal ideation.

One of the problems we have is that coroners refuse to gather this kind of information, and a bunch of suicide stats are still tied to coroner's decisions.

From the same section: "The lack of systematic mental health information in the NTDS data significanty limited our ability to identify the pathways to suicidal behavior among the respondents."

IOW "being transgender" cannot be identified as a factor putting someone at higher risk. It could be comorbid mental health issues, it could be adverse life experiences related to being transgender or gender-nonconforming.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make.

Adverse life experiences related to being transgender is exactly what we man when we say "being transgender inceases a person's risk of death by suicide".

There's no judgement of trans people in that comment - indeed, the point is to make society more accepting of trans people.

In this specific case, my point is meant to caution people (like another commenter) from considering surgical and hormonal transition a "cure" that can reduce this suicide attempt rate, whatever the actual number turns out to be.

The data simply does not support that conclusion, according to the study itself.

"Respondents who said they had received transition related health care or wanted to have it someday were more likely to report having attempted suicide than those who said they did not want it."

"The survey did not provide information about the timing of reported suicide attempts in relation to receiving transition-related health care, which precluded investigation of transition-related explanations for these patterns."

I agree that society should be more accepting of gender-nonconforming people regardless of their gender identity or approach to transition, if any. I wonder if this lack of acceptance is the cause of suicide, rather than dysphoria which in some cases is alleviated through medical intervention.

That's not the message I got from your earlier posts, which to me were saying that people who are trans are not at very much increased risk (whatever the cause might be) of attempted suicide.

Which was weird to me because from the evidence we have they are.

Well, they're definitely not a population with a 41% suicide rate, and probably not a population with a 41% suicide attempt rate. The study where that statistic comes from uses a sample of convenience.

The tl;dr is we don't know, so we shouldn't frame our decisions and policies as if we do know.

Specifically in this question: is a surgical/endocrinological approach or a mental health approach more likely to result in positive outcomes?

I don't think this is the place to debate standards of care for trans people. Here's a review of some literature, if you're interested: http://www.sebastianmitchellbarr.com/blog/2015/10/8/why-are-...

I wasn't implying that she shouldn't do these things, or that her problems don't matter. Quite the contrary, the previous comment tl;dr could be understood as saying that she was an exception because she had personal problems.