United States: A new study shows that the laws and policies a state has about transgender rights can affect the mental health of transgender people. The study found that transgender individuals who were worried about losing their rights were more likely to feel depressed or anxious.
On the other hand, those who knew about laws that protect them, like hate crime protections, were less likely to have these mental health issues.
The study was led by Arjee Restar from the University of Washington and was published in the journal JAMA Network Open on August 22.
State Legislation’s Growing Influence
As the Restar’s team noted that there’s been a vigorous movement in recent in the years to either restrict or preserve a trans person’s access to health care and all the other services which depends on the state where they live in.
“In the last few years, states within the U.S. have advanced a record number of bills targeting the restriction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and other queer protections and rights; as of June 2024, more than 598 bills across 43 states had been introduced, with 43 passed specific to targeting trans people’s rights,” the research team noted.
Not all the states have enacted such laws.
In Washington state here for example, “several measures have been taken to protect trans rights, “Restar and her team pointed out. Those include legislation that bars discrimination against trans people in the workplace, schools and housing as well as measures barring the denial of the health insurance coverage for treatments specific to trans people.
Survey Results from Washington State
Does knowing about these measures make a difference for the day-to-day mental well-being of transgender people?
To find out the Seattle team surveyed almost about 800 trans adults living in the Washington state in March and April of 2023.
Mostly about 86 percent did say they currently did have some level of depression a figure that’s much higher than was found in earlier studies.
“This was likely because data from those studies may capture the prevalence of mental health outcomes with a dataset that predates 2021, when anti-trans legislation in the U.S. first started escalating,” the researchers said.
Overall, trans people who said that they worried about their rights being taken away were 66% more likely to be battling depression, and almost three times as likely to suffer from anxiety, compared to those who said they weren’t worried, the study found.
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