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- 🧠 Gender-diverse youth show mild increases in traits like negative affectivity and detachment, according to recent findings.
- 📈 Higher levels of gender dysphoria were linked to more emotional distress and social withdrawal.
- 🧒 Younger adolescents (ages 14–16) reported more intense emotional traits than older peers.
- ⚠️ Increased traits reflect social stress and should not be mistaken for mental illness.
- 🏫 Supportive environments greatly improve mental health outcomes in gender-diverse youth.
Gender Dysphoria and Personality Traits: A Closer Look at Gender-Diverse Youth
When trying to understand gender-diverse youth, it’s not helpful to ask whether they're “more troubled.” It’s more accurate and kind to look at how their lives shape who they are. A new study shows how gender identity connects with personality traits. The goal is not to label gender-diverse youth as sick, but to better support them. When we look at the science, we get ways to help them feel good, confirm their identities, and stop making assumptions based on stigma.
What Is Gender Dysphoria?
Gender dysphoria is a psychological condition described in the DSM-5. It means a person feels a lot of discomfort because their gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth. This distress can show up emotionally, like anxiety, depression, or dysphoria. It can show up socially, like fear of being rejected or pulling away from others. And it can even show up physically, like feeling apart from one’s body or appearance.
It is important to say that not all gender-diverse people feel gender dysphoria. Many gender-diverse youth do not have distress that needs medical help. So, we should not assume they are struggling just because they do not fit common gender norms.
Gender-affirming care—such as hormone therapy, puberty blockers, or surgeries—has been shown to greatly lessen distress from gender dysphoria for many people. But care must always be personal. It needs to respect each person's needs and readiness.
Adolescence, Identity, and Emotional Vulnerability
Adolescence is a time of change. People start to find out who they are. Their brains change. Their social lives change a lot. During this time, young people find out who they are. They try different roles. They also start to imagine their futures.
For gender-diverse youth, this time of life can be even harder. All teenagers have challenges. But gender-diverse youth often face rejection, discrimination, and confusion too. This is especially true in places that do not teach about or support gender diversity.
This emotional openness is not a flaw or a sickness. Instead, it shows the hard parts of growing up in a world that is not always kind to gender diversity. Emotional ups and downs or pulling away from others are often seen as problems. But they can be normal ways to react to ongoing stress from outside.
So, it is very important to see the difference between personality traits and personality disorders. We must understand traits like emotional sensitivity, quick reactions, or detachment within their setting. We should not just call them problems.
The Study: Who Participated and What Was Measured?
To better understand the minds of gender-diverse youth, researchers Nils Konstantinovs and Petr Weiss did a study. It was published in the Journal of Psychosexual Health. They looked at 269 teens and young adults between ages 14 and 26.
Recruitment and Diversity
They found participants through community places like youth centers, LGBTQ+ groups, and online spots for gender-diverse people. These places welcome everyone. This way of finding people meant the group was not from clinics. And it was varied in age and background. This was a main good point of the study. It also meant less bias that often comes from groups of people already seeking help.
This way, the study got a truer picture of what gender-diverse youth usually go through. It was not just about those already in crisis or getting medical help.
Tools Used
People in the study took three tests about their mental state:
Personality Inventory for DSM-5 – Brief Form (PID-5-BF)
This test looks at five traits that can cause problems: negative affectivity, detachment, antagonism, disinhibition, and psychoticism.Borderline Personality Features Scale for Children (BPFSC)
It checks for mood swings, how people control their urges, how they see themselves, and how they get along with others. These are good signs for how well someone handles their feelings.Utrecht Gender Dysphoria Scale (UGDS)
This measures how much discomfort or distress someone feels when their gender does not match.
Using all these tools let the researchers look at how people reacted emotionally. And they looked at bigger parts of personality too. This covered both inner and outer patterns.
Which Personality Traits Were Higher?
The main question for this study was what personality traits, if any, stood out in gender-diverse youth. The results showed moderate—but not extreme—increases in a few main areas:
1. Negative Affectivity
This trait means someone often feels sad, ashamed, anxious, or guilty. It also means their emotions change quickly. Gender-diverse youth had slightly higher scores for this. It means they were more sensitive to emotional things. This might look worrying at first. But think about what they go through. Things like bullying, being called the wrong name or pronoun, or family rejection. These things can naturally make them react more emotionally.
But this greater sensitivity can also be a strength. It often goes with strong empathy, thinking deeply about oneself, and being aware of others.
2. Detachment
Increased detachment does not always mean unhealthy withdrawal. It might mean a young person is choosing to pull away from places or relationships that feel unsafe or that do not accept them. This can look like emotional numbness, less expression, or not much interest in being with others. These are common for people dealing with feeling unaccepted or pushed aside.
Gender-diverse youth often feel unaccepted early and often. So, some detachment can be a way to cope and save emotional energy.
3. Borderline Personality Features
Traits like fear of being left, mood swings, and not being sure who you are, which connect to borderline tendencies, were moderately higher in this group. This was especially true for those who reported more gender dysphoria.
This fits well with the process of figuring out a complex identity that is often looked down upon during teen years. It is normal for people this age to wonder who they are. For gender-diverse youth, identity questions can feel even more pressing and hard.
Additional Traits in Younger Participants
Among participants aged 14–16, three more traits were a bit higher:
Antagonism: This can show up as anger or suspicion. It might come from trying to protect oneself after facing many small acts of disrespect.
Disinhibition: It is linked to acting on impulse. This may show emotional coping instead of being reckless.
Psychoticism: People often misunderstand this. It can mean unusual thinking or a very active inner world. These are not always signs of psychosis.
None of these higher scores were strong enough for a mental health diagnosis. This confirms that these are just differences within normal growing-up stages.
Traits Aren't Diagnoses
It is very important not to confuse personality traits with mental illness. The traits seen may look like those in mental health diagnoses. But they exist on a scale and are greatly shaped by the situation.
Traits describe something, but they do not diagnose it. They only become a problem if they keep stopping someone from living well in many parts of their life. It is easy to cross the line from studying mental health to help, to wrongly saying people are sick just for being different.
We must understand increased emotionality or social withdrawal in gender-diverse youth by looking at their real social lives. Things like hostility, feeling unaccepted, being ignored, and being kept out by systems. These things affect how their minds work.
The Role of Stigma on Mental Health
This study matches the minority stress model from Hatzenbuehler (2009). This model says that groups pushed to the side feel ongoing social stress because of stigma, prejudice, and unfair treatment. This stress gets into the mind through things like being watchful, expecting to be rejected, believing bad things about oneself, and actual unfair events.
Over time, these pressures cause problems with controlling emotions, self-doubt, and trying to avoid things. These traits are very similar to the mild increases found in this study.
This means the traits seen in gender-diverse youth are not inner faults. Instead, they are often reactions to harmful messages from culture and being truly left out.
Why Younger Teens Report More Distress
The age of 14–16 is already a time of strong emotional and mental reactions. Add the weight of an identity looked down on, or feeling like they do not belong. Then it makes sense that this age group reported stronger emotional traits.
A few things add to this:
- Little Independence: Teens depend on families and schools. These may or may not support their gender identity.
- Still Learning Coping Skills: At this age, skills to control emotions are still growing.
- More Inner Pressure: Many feel they must “figure out” their gender identity too soon. This is because of what society expects.
These are not faults. They show young people dealing with very stressful situations without enough help.
Understanding the Study’s Limits
The findings are important. But every study has limits. This study is no different:
Cross-sectional Data: The study looked at people at only one point in time. It can show links, but not cause and effect. And it cannot show how these traits change over time.
Self-reported Measures: All information depends on what people said about themselves. This is always personal and can have bias.
Sampling Bias: The group studied was more community-based than many others. But it still had people who chose to take part. This can make the results lean towards those already looking into their identity or using support systems.
These limits show we need stronger, longer research. This would make clear how these emotional patterns move and last.
Best Support Practices for Clinicians
Clinicians can better help gender-diverse youth by changing their way of thinking. They should move from labeling youth as sick to using an approach that focuses on strengths and acceptance. Main ways to help include:
- Validation: Say that their experiences are real and valid. Do this without trying to “fix” them.
- Identity-Affirming Practices: Use chosen names and pronouns. Also, confirm their search for identity without pushing them.
- Family and School Engagement: Work with families and schools to make places safer.
- Distress Tolerance Skills: Give tools for controlling emotions, especially for younger teens.
Clinicians must see the link between where someone is and how well they are. Often, helping the situation around the youth—not just the youth themselves—is how real healing starts.
The Power of Affirmation and Belonging
Saying 'yes' to someone can protect gender-diverse youth. According to Russell and Fish (2016), when LGBTQ+ youth feel safe, understood, and accepted in their surroundings, their emotional well-being gets much better. This is true no matter their usual traits or risks.
Help can come from many places:
- Family Acceptance: Open talks, respect for names and pronouns, and love with no strings attached.
- Schools being open to everyone: Gender-neutral bathrooms, lesson plans that include everyone, and staff training.
- Support from other young people: Ways to join LGBTQ+ groups, online communities, and have mentors.
Places that say 'yes' to identity do more than just lower distress. They help people truly do well.
When Traits Become Strengths
People often see these traits as weaknesses. But many traits looked at in the study can be seen as helpful or even good:
- Emotional Sensitivity: It allows for kindness, deep thinking, and being creative.
- Detachment: It helps save emotional energy in unsafe places.
- Finding out who you are: This builds self-awareness and strength. It helps people find meaning in their lives.
Changing the story from “symptoms” to “survival strategies” changes how we understand things. It puts youth's power first, instead of just diagnosing their distress.
Looking Ahead: More Research, Better Policy
To truly help gender-diverse youth, science needs to change. Research should focus on:
- Longitudinal Studies: Follow how emotional and personality traits change over time with accepting support.
- Ways to look at different parts of identity: Think about how race, disability, money status, and neurodivergence connect with gender identity.
- Things that protect: Find ways to build strength, such as family support, pride in one's culture, and acceptance from friends.
When it comes to rules, this data calls for open practices in schools. It also calls for health care access for gender-affirming care, and laws that protect. These steps lead to better emotional health and safety in who someone is.
Higher Traits Do Not Mean Illness—They Mean We Should Pay Attention
Yes, gender-diverse youth may show higher personality traits. These are often about negative feelings, detachment, and distress related to identity. But these are far from what doctors would call a problem. They mostly show stress from their surroundings, not something wrong inside them.
These results call for kindness, not doctors being suspicious. Higher traits mean we need to pay attention. Not to what is “wrong” with youth. But to what needs to change in the world around them.
Want to help your gender-diverse clients or students better? Start by making safe, accepting spaces. And let science lead your kindness.
Citations
Hatzenbuehler, M. L. (2009). How does sexual minority stigma “get under the skin”? A psychological mediation framework. Psychological Bulletin, 135(5), 707–730. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016441
Russell, S. T., & Fish, J. N. (2016). Mental health in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 12, 465–487. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-021815-093153
Konstantinovs, N., & Weiss, P. (2024). Examining the relationship between personality traits and gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults. Journal of Psychosexual Health. https://doi.org/10.1177/26318318251355397
