Social Support for Rural Gender Diverse Youth Compared to Cisgender Peers

Details

• Alternative Title:
  J Adolesc Health
• Personal Author:
  Kidd, Kacie M. ; Mitchell, Kylerra ; Sequeira, Gina ; Mann, Michael J. ; Smith, Megan L. ; Benton, Brandon ; Kristjansson, Alfgeir L.
• Description:
  Background
  
  Gender diverse youth (GDY) experience higher rates of mental health concerns than their cisgender peers, but these can be ameliorated by feeling support from family, school, and community. Little is known about how youth perceptions of support vary by gender identity, especially for younger adolescents and those living in rural areas.
  
  Methods
  
  Youth ages 12-19 completed anonymous surveys including measures of perceived support and a two-step gender identity question. GDY (n=206) were further categorized into binary and nonbinary gender identities. An additional 500 randomly selected cisgender youth were included for comparison. Multivariate Analyses of Variance with Tukey post-hoc tests were employed to test GDY group differences while accounting for the interaction between scaled measures.
  
  Results
  
  Cisgender youth had the highest perceived support across all support measures while youth who shared both binary and nonbinary aspects of their gender identity had the lowest rates of perceived support. The F tests for between-subject effects were statistically significant (p<.001) for all six support measures, and multivariate group testing was statistically significant with Wilks’ λ 6.38(18,1621.17) = .82, p<.001.
  
  Discussion
  
  Despite research demonstrating a strong association between perceived support and improved mental health outcomes, GDY in our sample had lower rates of perceived support at the family, school, and community levels. GDY with both binary and nonbinary gender identities had the lowest levels of perceived support. Further research is needed to see if this finding is consistent in other populations and to develop targeted interventions to improve perceived support for this population.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Adolescent Female Gender Identity Humans Male Mental Health Social Support Surveys And Questionnaires Transgender Persons
• Keywords:
  Family Parent School Transgender Youth
• Source:
  J Adolesc Health. 73(6):1132-1137
• Pubmed ID:
  37715765
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC10841152
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  K23 HD109376/HD/NICHD NIH HHSUnited States/ ; U48 DP006391/DP/NCCDPHP CDC HHSUnited States/ ; U48DP006391/ACL/ACL HHSUnited States/ ; U54 GM104942/GM/NIGMS NIH HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  73
• Issue:
  6
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:4c77628e4b75a7cd573bd29acc51ee914ba3467a0a479299c980de06576b6ccbc94647e413ffe4191ffb77a1d4132538934c147de4ce2acf26ab832c1cd977dc
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/157927/cdc_157927_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 344.37 KB ]