Advancing Research on Minority Stress and Resilience in Trans Children and Adolescents in the 21st Century

Transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents bear a disproportionate level of poor health, and adverse developmental and academic outcomes compared to their cisgender peers. In this article, I review evidence from recent research on minority stress and resilience among trans youth and advocate for two additional domains to be included when studying the experiences of trans youth from a minority stress perspective. I describe the variability across sexual-minority and gender-minority youth in experiences of minority stress across and within contexts. I advocate for explicit attention in minority stress models with gender-minority youth to the domains of (a) intrapersonal and interpersonal gender dysphoria, and (b) access and use of affirmative and comprehensive health care.

Automated summary

When studying minority stress and resilience among transgender youth, it is important to include considerations of both intrapersonal and interpersonal gender dysphoria, as well as access to affirmative and comprehensive healthcare. Variability in experiences across different minority youth groups should also be taken into account.