Chapman University has published research on substance abuse among transgender students in California. The research looked at students in middle and high schools in nearly every school district in California. Results showed transgender adolescents were more than two times more likely to engage in substance use in their lifetimes. The paper appears in the Journal of School Health.
“Transgender adolescents face tremendous social stress in families and schools, which often leads to behavioral health disparities,” said Kris De Pedro, Ph.D., assistant professor at Chapman University and lead author on the study. “We wanted to assess whether rates of substance use were higher among transgender adolescents when compared with nontransgender adolescents.”
The study showed transgender students were two and half times more likely than nontransgender students to use cocaine/methamphetamine in their lifetime, and about 2.8 times more likely to report using an inhalant in the past 30 days. Transgender students were also more than twice as…