health and wellness
Transgender Americans report lower quality of life than cisgender people, study finds
New research has found that transgender Americans are more likely to have health risks and a poor quality of life. The study, published on Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, examined data from 3,075 transgender adults and compared it to data from 719,657 cisgender adults.
Analysis of this data revealed that transgender people are less likely to have health insurance than cisgender people, those who are not transgender. In addition, they are 66 percent more likely to have experienced "severe mental distress," NBC News explained. Trans survey participants were also more inclined to unhealthy habits such as a sedentary lifestyle or smoking.
The survey that collected the study's data was administered from 2014 to 2017, a period when "attitudes shifted" and transgender people may have gotten worse, said Kellan Baker, the study's author and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University.
"This study shows that being a transgender person in the U.S. today — being transgender in a society that you know doesn't fully accept you — is hard," Baker told NBC News in an email.
Xiang Cai, a researcher at Columbia University who wasn't involved in the study, said that the study's conclusions reflect "multiple levels of transgender-specific stigmas." But trans people are still "capable and resilient," Cai added, saying that gender-affirming surgeries for trans people can lead to higher quality of life. Read more at NBC News.