1st Federal Survey of Trans Students: 72% Feel ‘Hopeless,’ 1 in 4 Tried Suicide

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The first nationally representative survey of LGBTQ youth has found that 3.3% of U.S. high schoolers identify as transgender and 2.2% as questioning. These gender-nonconforming students report alarmingly high rates of depression, suicidality and in-school victimization. 

In 2023, 72% of transgender students and 69% of those questioning report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness and 1 in 4 attempted suicide. By comparison, 11% of cisgender girls and 5% of cisgender boys reported a suicide attempt. Ten percent of trans youth received medical treatment after trying to take their own life. 

Last year marked the first time data on high school students’ gender identity was collected as part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Administered every other year to some 20,000 ninth- through 12^th-graders, the survey has long been considered the most accurate depiction of the well-being of LGBTQ youth. 

This most recent survey is also the first to collect data on student welfare since dozens of laws in almost half of U.S. states have rolled back protections for LGBTQ youth and limited transgender people’s access to health care. A separate, peer-reviewed study released in September by The Trevor Project found the rate of suicide attempts rose by up to 72% in places that enacted the laws between 2018 and 2022. 

“The figures reported by the CDC are harrowing and indicate that much remains to be done to support transgender young people’s health and safety in the U.S., especially as we’re witnessing another record-breaking year of anti-transgender legislation,” says Ronita Nath, Trevor’s vice president of research. 

The federal data adds to research showing that LGBTQ students aren’t safe at school. Compared with 8.5% of cisgender male students, more than 1 in 4 gender-nonconforming youth reported skipping school within the last month out of fear, and 40% said they were bullied. More than 10% of transgender and questioning students lacked stable housing, a rate five times higher than that of their cisgender peers. 

“These data confirm what we have long known to be true: Transgender young people are disproportionately impacted by a number of health disparities,” says Nath. “It’s crucial to clarify that these young people are not inherently prone to these negative mental health outcomes, but rather placed at higher risk because of how they are mistreated and stigmatized by others.”

According to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks legislation, 53% of all LGBTQ people now live in states where there are no legal protections for queer students. Another 2% live in places where new laws prohibit local governments, including school districts, from enacting anti-discrimination policies. States with anti-bullying laws are home to 45% of the LGBTQ population.

Data about trans youth is scarce, but the statistics that are available underscore higher rates of poor mental health, suicidality, in-school victimization and other struggles. The number of youth who identify as gender-nonconforming or questioning in the new CDC data is much higher than past estimates. Extrapolating from 2017 and 2019 Youth Risk Behavior statistics drawn from a smaller number of states, in 2022 the Williams Institute, a UCLA-based LGBTQ research center, suggested 1.4% of teens are transgender. 

It is known that a higher number of youth now identify as LGBTQ in general than previous generations. But researchers caution that at least one more CDC survey cycle is needed to draw conclusions about whether teens are now more likely to say their gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth. 

In 2022, President Joe Biden issued an executive order geared at expanding LGBTQ data collection by the U.S. Department of Education and other federal agencies. At the same time, however, at least 10 states — including six where anti-gay and trans legislation has been enacted — have stopped participating in the Youth Risk Behavior Survey in full or in part. Civil rights advocates have complained that this will make it harder to document the impact of the new laws. 

“We are grateful to see that, finally, transgender young people are being counted,” says Nath. “We urge all public health institutions to continue collecting data on this population, and to fund additional research and resources to better serve and protect transgender youth across the country.”

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