A new analysis of CDC mortality data found no statistically detectable increase in teen suicide rates following state restrictions on medical gender interventions for minors, challenging claims that such laws necessarily produce more suicide deaths while leaving broader questions about individual treatment outcomes unresolved.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A new analysis examining U.S. suicide mortality before and after states restricted medical gender interventions for minors found no statistically significant relationship between those laws and increased suicide rates among teenagers.
The report, released Sept. 16 by Do No Harm research director Jay Greene and Center for Accountability in Medicine senior director Ian Kingsbury, used federal mortality data and several statistical approaches to test a frequently made argument in the debate over pediatric gender medicine: that restricting access to medical transition will result in additional youth suicides.
Greene and Kingsbury concluded that the available mortality data show “zero evidence that state policies led to increased suicide rates,” they wrote in discussing their findings.
The report examined Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suicide mortality data from 2018 through 2024, estimates from UCLA’s Williams Institute of the percentage of teenagers identifying as transgender in individual states, and the timing of state laws restricting pharmaceutical or surgical gender interventions for minors.
CDC records confirm that suicide remains a major cause of death among adolescents and that mortality rates can be examined by age and state.
The researchers then constructed statistical models intended to determine whether adoption of the state restrictions corresponded with changes in adolescent suicide mortality.
“The primary outcome we examine in this model is the natural log of annual suicide rates for ages 15–19 in each state between 2018 and 2024,” the authors wrote. “This is the CDC-reported age group most likely to be affected by state bans on gender interventions for minors. Taking the natural log of that rate allows us to interpret the result of this model as the percentage change in these suicide rates as a result of policy changes.”
Their state-level analysis produced an estimated effect that was essentially indistinguishable from no change.
Enacting the restrictions “has an effect on suicide rates for 15–19-year-olds that cannot be distinguished from zero with confidence,” the report states. “The estimated effect is -0.3 percent, which would mean that the policy bans reduce suicide rates by 0.3 percent, and the p value of 0.931 means that we cannot be confident that this estimated effect is actually different from zero.”
The negative 0.3% estimate therefore should not be interpreted as evidence that restrictions reduce suicide. Statistically, the researchers found no reliable effect in either direction.
Do No Harm summarizes the finding as no evidence that state restrictions on surgical or pharmaceutical interventions for minors increased adolescent suicide rates.
The researchers conducted another analysis using national monthly data, which allowed them to focus on ages 13 through 17 rather than the broader 15-to-19 state-level category.
That model produced essentially the same result.
“The estimated effect rounds to 0, and the p value is 0.987, meaning that we are unable to distinguish between this estimated effect and zero,” Greene and Kingsbury wrote.
They also incorporated estimates of the percentage of transgender-identifying teenagers potentially affected by the laws.
“Changing the model to focus on how the percentage of self-identified transgender teenagers affected by state bans affects suicide rates confirms our earlier finding that there is no relationship between these policy changes and youth suicide rates,” the report states.
The findings address population-level suicide mortality following changes in state law. They do not directly measure whether a particular medical intervention raises or lowers suicide risk for an individual adolescent, nor do the models identify the gender identity of each teenager whose death appears in the CDC statistics.
That distinction is important because suicide risk among young people experiencing gender dysphoria involves multiple potential factors, including psychiatric illness. A Finnish nationwide register study published in BMJ Mental Health found elevated suicide mortality among gender-referred adolescents in unadjusted comparisons, but the difference was no longer statistically significant after researchers accounted for specialist-level psychiatric treatment history. The authors emphasized the importance of identifying and treating accompanying mental disorders.
The new U.S. report instead tests a narrower policy claim: whether states experienced a detectable rise in completed adolescent suicides after imposing restrictions.
The authors argue that this distinction matters because some public arguments for pediatric gender interventions have relied on warnings that denying medical transition could leave parents choosing between a “dead son or a live daughter.”
The report challenges the use of that formulation as a prediction about suicide mortality following state restrictions.
In their commentary about the research, Greene and Kingsbury also criticized previous research frequently cited in debates over gender medicine.
Such studies, they wrote, “generally rely on self-reported mental health surveys — a low reliability method,” and some lack what the authors consider adequate control groups or designs capable of isolating the effect of treatment or policy.
Do No Harm similarly states that earlier work has often relied on observational designs or proxies for suicide rather than completed-suicide mortality. The organization says its analysis uses difference-in-differences and national time-series approaches to investigate the effect of policy changes.
The report and its conclusions were also highlighted by LifeSite News.
Greene and Kingsbury said the results undermine attempts to present increased suicide deaths as an established consequence of state restrictions.
“Transgender activists will continue to use the threat of suicide as a means of bludgeoning society into accepting invasive, irreversible medical interventions for children,” they wrote. “But unless they can produce evidence for a relationship between state restrictions and suicides, their tactics should be called out for what they are: A manipulative bluff.”
“Evidence, not emotional appeals or baseless assertions, is essential when our kids’ health and well-being are on the line,” the authors continued. “If we’re going to lower the suicide rate among deeply confused teens, we should at least begin with intellectual honesty and genuine compassion — not activism masquerading as medical expertise.”
Those statements represent the authors’ interpretation of their analysis and the broader policy debate. Their statistical finding is narrower: within the models they used, state restrictions were not associated with a detectable increase in adolescent suicide mortality.
The report arrives amid a wider reassessment of the evidence supporting medical interventions for children and adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria.
A 2024 review of pediatric gender medicine cited concerns about the quality of evidence supporting several interventions.
The most consequential reassessment occurred in England, where the independent Cass Review examined National Health Service gender services for children and adolescents.
The review described pediatric gender medicine as having been “built on shaky foundations” and said medical interventions required greater caution than had historically been exercised.
“Quite the reverse happened in the field of [so-called] gender care for children,” the source quoted the review as finding.
The Cass Review also stated: “[W]hile a considerable amount of research has been published in this field, systematic evidence reviews demonstrated the poor quality of the published studies, meaning there is not a reliable evidence base upon which to make clinical decisions, or for children and their families to make informed choices.”
NHS England subsequently adopted a substantially different model of care and said the evidence base for medical and nonmedical interventions needed to be improved. It ended routine prescribing of puberty-suppressing hormones for minors outside research settings and established a broader research program.
The Cass Review and its methodology have also generated debate among clinicians and researchers, but NHS England has continued implementing its recommendations and has acknowledged that evidence concerning several pediatric interventions remains limited.
Additional research has examined psychiatric outcomes among young people referred to gender services.
An April 2026 Finnish study covering “all under-23-year-old gender-referred individuals between 1996 and 2019” included 2,083 patients and 16,643 matched controls.
As described in a report on the Finnish findings, researchers found “markedly higher psychiatric morbidity” among gender-referred patients than among controls before and after referral, with treatment needs often continuing following medical interventions.
The published study found psychiatric morbidity of 45.7% among the gender-referred group before referral, compared with 15% among controls, and 61.7% at least two years after referral, compared with 14.6% among controls. The researchers concluded that psychiatric needs did not subside following medical gender reassignment.
Those results do not by themselves establish that medical intervention caused the psychiatric problems. The population already had substantially greater psychiatric morbidity before treatment, making the distinction between correlation and causation important.
The debate also includes accounts from people who underwent gender transition and later reversed course.
Some detransitioners have publicly described physical or psychological difficulties following treatment, while other former patients have discussed regret, anxiety and depression.
Such individual accounts can identify potential harms and areas requiring investigation but cannot on their own establish how frequently those outcomes occur across the larger patient population.
Financial incentives surrounding gender-related treatment have also been raised in the broader controversy.
A 2022 report involving Vanderbilt University Medical Center cited a presentation in which Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said, “these surgeries make a lot of money.”
That statement contributed to criticism of the institution but is separate from the statistical question examined by Greene and Kingsbury regarding suicide rates after state policy changes.
The newly released report does not establish that gender dysphoria carries no suicide risk, nor does it determine the effects of medical treatment on every individual patient. Existing research confirms that young people referred for gender-related distress frequently have substantial mental-health needs.
What the analysis does find is that, between 2018 and 2024, researchers could not detect an increase in adolescent suicide mortality attributable to state laws restricting medical gender interventions for minors.
That result directly tests one of the most consequential claims in the policy debate and found the estimated effect statistically indistinguishable from zero.
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