A while back I saw a study that was posted to /r/moderatepolitics (which I can’t find now). The results of the study was that transitioning didn’t lower the odds of a transgender person attempting suicide. I didn’t post a reply on that article because I wasn’t sure how to form my response, but after some cogitation, here it is:

First of all, that study has one obvious problem: it can’t account for trans people who are in the closet and successfully commit suicide. But aside from that, we’ll assume the study was accurate.

Depression is caused by a lot of things, which we’ll simplify as “stress.” A trans person who is in the closet is undergoing internal stress. Some of this is the same kind of stress anyone hiding a secret might feel. E.g., a gay person in a conservative family, someone thinking of divorcing their spouse, that sort of thing. It’s not just “a secret”, it’s specifically a secret they think or know will be received negatively by their friends and family.

When a trans person publicly comes out, it’s probably like a weight being lifted off their chest… only to be immediately replaced by a different weight. Now the trans person is experiencing external stress. At worst, they lose friends, their family disowns them, and they get stared at wherever they go (because most trans people are not lucky enough to be able to pass 100% of the time).

So, after all that, they’re just as stressed out, just as depressed, just as likely to commit suicide. Does that mean it’s pointless or even harmful to transition? No! It just means we need to work on increasing awareness and understanding of trans people and their challenges so society isn’t so shitty to them. All those external stressors are not things that they should have to deal with.