That "40 to 50%" trans statistic is incredibly worrying. Can you share where it's from so I can reference it in the future when these discussions come up?
It sounds worrying, and it is. But it's important to make one distinction.
It's not "transgender people inherently have a 40% suicide rate". It's "transgender people are in situations where their suicide rates climb to as high as 40%".
It's also important to understand the difference between "suicide ideation" and "suicide attempts" which are two different numbers that are often mixed up.
To answer your question, here is a source I am familiar with as a Canadian:
"Among trans Ontarians, 35.1 % [...] seriously considered [...] and 11.2 % attempted, suicide in the past year."
"Lower [...] transphobia [...] was associated with a 66 % reduction in ideation [...] and an additional 76 % reduction in attempts among those with ideation."
US numbers are higher: the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS) found that 41% of 6,450 transgender respondents said they had attempted suicide. I don't have the source other than a PDF saved on my local machine, but you should be able to find it easily enough.
It's also very important to look at the sample pool of such studies. I remember that one number that was widely used in debates was actually done on the transgender women population of a men's prison in south america. Of course the people there are miserable but the numbers won't be representative of the larger population. It stopped being used as much after people pointed out that fact.
Was the 2008 NTDS for all ages or just adults? Did it control for mental health? Does asking a single question about attempts without follow-up interviewing ("Have you ever attempted suicide?") have any effect on the reliability of the data? [1] Why say "40 to 50%"? How can a rate "go as high as" 40% to 50% -- do you mean, when you add more variables besides identifying as trans?
It's not "transgender people inherently have a 40% suicide rate". It's "transgender people are in situations where their suicide rates climb to as high as 40%".
It's also important to understand the difference between "suicide ideation" and "suicide attempts" which are two different numbers that are often mixed up.
- https://www.thetrevorproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/...
- https://issuu.com/trevorproject/docs/talking_about_suicide_a...
To answer your question, here is a source I am familiar with as a Canadian:
"Among trans Ontarians, 35.1 % [...] seriously considered [...] and 11.2 % attempted, suicide in the past year."
"Lower [...] transphobia [...] was associated with a 66 % reduction in ideation [...] and an additional 76 % reduction in attempts among those with ideation."
- https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...
US numbers are higher: the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS) found that 41% of 6,450 transgender respondents said they had attempted suicide. I don't have the source other than a PDF saved on my local machine, but you should be able to find it easily enough.
It's also very important to look at the sample pool of such studies. I remember that one number that was widely used in debates was actually done on the transgender women population of a men's prison in south america. Of course the people there are miserable but the numbers won't be representative of the larger population. It stopped being used as much after people pointed out that fact.