CDC: 3.3% of U.S. high school students identify as ‘transgender’

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported Thursday that the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) found 3.3% of U.S. high school students identified as “transgender” in 2023.

In a study published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), researchers Nicolas Suarez, et al. forgo the science of biology as they define “transgender” students as “those whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth.”

In addition to the 3.3% of high school students who identify as “transgender,” the authors state that another 2.2% identify as “questioning” their gender identity.

As Catholic News Agency (CNA) pointed out, the study’s data translate into an outcome that shows “of the nearly 17 million estimated high schoolers in the U.S., more than 550,000 identify as the opposite sex that they were born as, while over 370,000 are questioning their sex.”

The researchers also say they found that nearly 3 out of 4 — 72% — of those identifying as transgender suffer from “persistent sadness or hopelessness.”

Meanwhile, 26% of transgender-identifying and questioning high school students have attempted suicide within the past year, in contrast to the 5% of boys and 11% of girls who have done the same.

The study also reported that about 40% of both transgender-identifying and questioning students have been bullied at school, compared with 20.3% of girls and 14.8% of boys. About one-fourth of transgender students also reported staying out of school because of feelings of being unsafe compared with 8.5% of boys and 14.9% of girls.

“Transgender and questioning students experienced a higher prevalence of violence, poor mental health, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and unstable housing, and a lower prevalence of school connectedness than their cisgender peers,” the researchers concluded, urging remedies that focus on environmental and social change for greater acceptance of “trans” youth, rather than for individual mental health treatment that attempts to uncover the true underlying causes of the aberrant identification.

“These are the first nationally representative data on transgender and questioning students,” the authors touted, adding:

Their school environments are neither as safe nor as supportive as they are for their cisgender peers. That transgender and questioning students are more likely to experience poor mental health and suicidal thoughts and behaviors than their cisgender peers is concerning. Tools exist to improve the safety and supportiveness of schools, and research demonstrates that when schools make steps to implement inclusive policies and practices, the mental health of all students improves. More effort is necessary to ensure that the health and well-being of students who are socially marginalized is prioritized.

In its coordinated ad image for the study, the CDC joined the researchers’ opinions with its own statement: “When schools implement LGBTQ+ supportive policies and practices, all students experience better mental health.”

However, Jill Simons, M.D., executive director of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), observed recently in a piece at the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse that many children and teens who express gender confusion are “already stressed” and suffering from “autism or pre-existing psychological co-morbidities such as anxiety and depression.” 

In ACPeds’ position statement on gender dysphoria in young people, the pediatricians remark on how it is now often claimed that “discrimination, violence, psychopathology, and suicide are the direct and inevitable consequences of withholding social affirmation and puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones from a gender dysphoric child.”

They add, nevertheless:

… the fact that 80 percent to 95 percent of gender-dysphoric youth emerge physically and psychologically intact after passing through puberty without social affirmation refutes this claim. Furthermore, over 90 percent of people who die of suicide have a diagnosed mental disorder. There is no evidence that gender-dysphoric children who commit suicide are any different. Therefore, the cornerstone for suicide prevention should be the same for them as for all children: early identification and treatment of psychological co-morbidities.

Mary Rice Hasson, an attorney with the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) in Washington, D.C., told CNA that the rapid surge in young people who identify as transgender is “unprecedented.” Hasson directs EPPC’s Person and Identity Project, an initiative that fosters Catholic teaching on sex and gender.

“[S]ocial contagion” – in addition to both the widespread use of smartphones and social media and public schools that promote gender ideology – plays a major role in the rise of gender dysphoria among youth, she said.

Hasson added the researchers of the current study ignored the young participants’ mental health background, thereby omitting the potential real causes of depression and suicide in this group.

As CatholicVote has reported, British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass, who led the widely acclaimed “Cass report” of a systematic review of studies and guidelines on so-called “gender-affirming care” for youth, recently told the New York Times that children with gender dysphoria must be treated as “a whole person, taking a holistic approach, managing all of those things and not assuming they’ve all come about as a result of gender distress.”

Cass has consistently stressed that children with gender issues are likely suffering from other psychological distress or family issues that are not being addressed because the field of gender medicine is allied with political activists. 

“[T]he toxicity of the debate is exceptional,” Cass wrote in her final report. “The knowledge and expertise of experienced clinicians who have reached different conclusions about the best approach to care are sometimes dismissed and invalidated.”

The pediatrician told the Times the decision by a healthcare professional to recommend a “medical pathway” for a child right away often backfires when “the problems that they think were going to be solved just don’t go away.”

Hasson also told CNA the current YRBS study “showed its ideological bias” by favoring activist-led recommendations such as greater acceptance and inclusivity for youth identifying as transgender rather than working to uncover the “likely reasons why trans-identified students reported greater suicidality and more depression than other students.” 

“Although the YRBS is a snapshot in time — it does not show causality — the YRBS report speculated that trans-identified students reported poor mental health because of stigma and feeling ‘unsafe’ at school — and suggested this requires greater efforts by schools to be inclusive,” Hasson said, adding that “[o]ther research demonstrates that trans-identified youth suffer high rates of mental health issues that explain their suicidality.”

Meanwhile, Hasson said that “Catholics need to be bold and share the truth about the human person — we are created male or female. And that’s God’s gift to us, something to receive and celebrate, not reject.”