Thread by @segm_ebm

🚨A widely cited Trevor Project paper from 2 yrs ago concluded that state restrictions on youth gender transition increase youth suicide risk. But a new peer-reviewed reanalysis shows the signal came from a single state, Idaho—which had no such restrictions during the study. /1

Two years ago, a paper in Nature Human Behaviour claimed that “anti-trans” laws, including restrictions on pediatric gender transition, increased suicidality among gender-dysphoric youth. Today, a commentary in the same journal challenges that claim. /2
nature.com/articles/s4156…

The peer-reviewed commentary by Cohn et al. identifies major limitations in the original Nature Human Behaviour study. Its headline claim — that “anti-trans” laws caused a 72% rise in suicidality — relied heavily on a few hundred respondents from Idaho, where no laws restricting pediatric transition were in effect during the study period.
The only two potentially relevant laws in Idaho around the study time period were HB 500, which restricted male participation in the female category in school sports, and HB 509, which concerned the recording of sex on birth certificates.
But one of these laws was blocked more than a year before the signal of increased suicidality appeared in the data—and the other never went into effect at all.
/3

The Trevor Project study’s claim of elevated suicidality in youth following the passage of “anti-transgender” laws has been cited over 100 times, and often in the context of opposition to restrictions on youth transitions. However, as the new commentary convincingly demonstrates, this finding is at a critical risk of bias and not reliable. /4

We are in the process of evaluating Cohn et al.’s analysis and we will share our results shortly. /end
nature.com/articles/s4156…