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-...