The following is a summary of “Social Support for Rural Gender Diverse Youth Compared to Cisgender Peers,” published in the December 2023 issue of Pediatrics by Kidd, et al.

Gender-diverse youth (GDY) have more mental health problems than their straight peers, but these problems can be lessened by having help from family, school, and community. Not much was known about how young people’s views of support change depending on their gender, especially those who live in rural places or are younger. 

12–19-year-olds filled out private surveys that asked about their gender identity and how much help they felt they were getting. GDY people (n = 206) were further divided into groups with binary and nonbinary gender identities. For comparison, another 500 randomly chosen straight teens were also added. The study used multivariate analyses of variance with Tukey post hoc tests to look for differences between the GDY groups while considering how the scaled measures interact. Teenagers who identified as cisgender had the highest rates of perceived support across all support measures. Teenagers who identified as both binary and nonbinary had the lowest rates of perceived support. All six support measures showed that the F tests for between-subject effects were statistically significant (P <.001). The Wilks’λ 6.38(18,1621.17) = 0.82; P <.001 showed that the multivariate group testing was also statistically significant. Even though studies have shown a strong link between feeling supported and having better mental health, the GDY in our group had lower levels of feeling supported at the family, school, and community levels. The least amount of support was felt by GDY, who identified as both binary and nonbinary. 

More study was needed to see if the result held for other groups of people and to develop specific ways to help this group feel more supported.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1054139X23003828