Transgender people face dramatically elevated rates of suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts compared to the general population. Among transgender adults in the U.S., 42% report having attempted suicide at some point in their lives, and 81% have thought about it. These numbers, drawn from a Williams Institute study at UCLA School of Law, reflect a crisis that is shaped by rejection, discrimination, and violence, but also one where specific protective factors make a measurable difference.
Suicide Attempts and Ideation in Adults
The lifetime numbers for transgender adults are stark: 42% have attempted suicide and 81% have experienced suicidal thoughts. For recent time frames, 7% of transgender adults reported a suicide attempt in the past year, and 44% reported recent suicidal ideation. About one in five also reported recent non-suicidal self-injury.
CDC surveillance data from 2019 to 2020 focused on transgender women in seven U.S. urban areas found that roughly 18% had considered suicide and 4% had attempted it in the past 12 months. Six in ten of those surveyed had experienced violence or harassment during that same period, and those experiences were directly associated with higher rates of suicidal thinking.
Youth Are at Even Higher Risk
The numbers are particularly alarming among young people. The Trevor Project’s 2024 national survey found that 46% of transgender and nonbinary young people seriously considered suicide in the past year, compared to 30% of cisgender LGBTQ+ youth. For actual attempts, 14% of transgender and nonbinary youth reported one in the past year, double the 7% rate among cisgender peers.
Broken down further, transgender boys and men had the highest rates: 52% considered suicide and 18% attempted it. Transgender girls and women reported rates of 47% and 14%, respectively. Nonbinary and genderqueer youth fell slightly lower at 43% and 13%.
Earlier CDC data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey found even steeper numbers: 44% of transgender students seriously considered a suicide attempt and 34% reported actually attempting one. That compares to 16% and 7% among cisgender students. Transgender and nonbinary youth report more than four times the rate of suicide attempts compared to their cisgender peers.
Completed Suicides: What the Data Shows
Most statistics you’ll encounter focus on attempts and ideation rather than deaths, partly because death records in many countries don’t capture gender identity. One of the few large-scale studies on actual suicide deaths comes from Denmark, which tracks legal gender changes in national registries. That study, published in JAMA, found a suicide mortality rate of 75 per 100,000 person-years among transgender individuals, compared to 21 per 100,000 for non-transgender individuals. That’s roughly 3.5 times the rate. Even in a country with relatively strong healthcare access, the disparity is substantial.
These numbers likely undercount transgender deaths in places without similar tracking systems. In the U.S., for instance, coroner reports typically record sex assigned at birth, not gender identity, making population-level mortality data nearly impossible to compile.
What Drives the Risk
The elevated rates are not an inherent feature of being transgender. They track closely with how transgender people are treated by the world around them.
Family rejection is one of the strongest predictors. Research from San Francisco State University’s Family Acceptance Project found that LGBT young adults who experienced low family acceptance during adolescence were more than three times as likely to have suicidal thoughts and to attempt suicide, compared to those whose families were accepting. The inverse held true as well: high family acceptance was protective against depression, substance use, and suicidal behavior.
Violence and harassment play a direct role. In the CDC’s surveillance of transgender women, experiencing violence or harassment was independently associated with suicidal ideation, even after accounting for other factors. Social support from friends, family, or a significant other offered some protection, but it did not fully offset the impact of violence. In other words, support helps, but it cannot completely counteract the harm of being targeted.
Age and economic vulnerability also matter. One intersectional analysis found that transgender and nonbinary participants aged 16 to 19 had the highest past-year attempt rate at 11%. Among those 20 and older, people with a history of sex work (often a marker of economic marginalization) attempted at a rate of 8.4%, compared to 2.5% for those without that history.
Factors That Reduce Risk
The same research that documents the crisis also identifies what helps. Gender-affirming medical care is one of the most studied interventions. A University of Washington study found that transgender youth who received gender-affirming hormones or puberty blockers had 60% lower odds of depression and 73% lower odds of self-harm or suicidal thoughts compared to those who did not receive such care.
Family acceptance, as noted above, cuts suicide attempt risk by more than two-thirds. Social support from friends and partners also lowers the prevalence of suicidal thinking, though the CDC data suggests its protective effect has limits when someone is also facing violence or harassment. The pattern across studies is consistent: when transgender people are accepted, supported, and able to access appropriate care, suicide risk drops significantly. When they face rejection, discrimination, and barriers to care, it rises.