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In Daniella Carter's TED talk "Walking in your truth as an LGBT youth", she mentioned:

I need it, they need it, we need the love, we need the liberation, we need the support, not only for the 2.5 million homeless LGBT youth but for the 41 percent of transgender people that attempt suicide.

However, she did not provide a source for this assertion. Have 41% of transgender people attempted suicide?

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    I'm also doubting that 2.5 million homeless LGBT youths number... Feb 17, 2020 at 15:33
  • @AskAboutMonica maybe you could ask a separate question about it? Feb 17, 2020 at 15:38

1 Answer 1

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This number seems to come from here:

The prevalence of suicide attempts among respondents to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS), conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality, is 41 percent, which vastly exceeds the 4.6 percent of the overall U.S. population who report a lifetime suicide attempt, and is also higher than the 10-20 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults who report ever attempting suicide.

Suicide Attempts among Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Adults

There have been other similar surveys done (which got results varying from 25-43%, as reported in the introduction) but this one is the largest, “with over 6,000 respondents”.

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    it clarifies that "the NTDS questionnaire included only a single item about suicidal behavior that asked, “Have you ever attempted suicide?” with dichotomized responses of Yes/No. Researchers have found that using this question alone in surveys can inflate the percentage of affirmative responses..."
    – dandavis
    Feb 17, 2020 at 21:29

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