Enacted Stigma, Mental Health, and Protective Factors Among Transgender Youth in Canada

^*Address correspondence to: Jaimie F. Veale, PhD, School of Psychology, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand, E-mail: [email protected]

Background

Transgender youth (sometimes called trans and gender nonconforming) are those whose gender does not match their sex assigned at birth.¹ An increasing number of transgender people disclose about being transgender during adolescence and early adulthood.² Being perceived as transgender may make youth vulnerable to minority stress, which has been proposed as an explanation for the high rates of mental health difficulties reported among this group.^3–5

Minority stress theory suggests that members of minority groups experience stressors related specifically to their membership with that group.⁶ These stressors are a result of sociocultural sanctions of status, prejudice, and discrimination, and the theory proposes that they negatively impact psychological well-being and adaptation. Experiences of minority stress not only result from specific negative events but also from the overarching experiences in society that the minority individual negotiates in their everyday lives.⁷ Minority stress theory has been applied to transgender people.⁸ Stressors that are specific to transgender individuals, which have been identified, include feeling or being unsafe in public restrooms, lack of access to legal documents or medical care due to differing records of sex and legal name, and nonaffirmation of one's gender by others.⁹ A number of recent studies have examined components of the minority stress model among transgender samples.

There is now a significant body of evidence for minority stress experiences among transgender youth, with around 80% reporting verbal harassment^10–12 or bullying at school.¹³ A study of 290 high school students across the United States found that the majority had been physically harassed in the past year due to their gender expression, almost two-thirds reporting they feel unsafe at school due to their gender expression...