Abstract

Parental support is known to enhance the mental health and well-being of trans and gender-diverse (TGD) youth. Little is known about the impact of parental supportiveness on patient empowerment amongst youth seeking medical gender-affirmation. We evaluated the relationship between healthcare empowerment and perceived level of parental support in a sample of 176 TGD youth, ages 14–24, who responded to a healthcare empowerment survey. We used pairwise Chi-squared tests to understand significant associations between empowerment items and a four-point measure of parent supportiveness/unsupportiveness. Youth’s sense of control over gender-affirming medical care decreased with decreasing parental support (p < 0.001). Empowerment scores related to knowledge, decision-making, and supporting peers, did not differ between youth with very unsupportive and very supportive parents (p > 0.05). Youth with somewhat unsupportive parents consistently reported the lowest empowerment. This study adds to a body of work that suggests that high parental supportiveness for TGD youth yields positive outcomes. However, additional work is needed to understand the high levels of patient empowerment observed in youth with the most unsupportive caregivers and to explore how healthcare providers/systems can better support youth with somewhat unsupportive parents, who experience the lowest empowerment. Further work with a more nuanced parental support instrument is also warranted.

摘要

众所周知，父母的支持可以增强跨性别和性别多元化 (TGD) 青少年的心理健康和福祉。对于寻求医疗性别肯定的青少年来说，父母的支持对患者赋权的影响知之甚少。我们以 176 名 14-24 岁的 TGD 青少年为样本，评估了医疗保健赋权与父母支持感知水平之间的关系，这些青少年对医疗保健赋权调查做出了回应。我们使用配对卡方检验来了解授权项目与家长支持/不支持的四点衡量标准之间的显着关联。青少年对性别肯定医疗保健的控制感随着父母支持的减少而下降（p < 0.001）。在父母非常不支持和非常支持的青少年之间，与知识、决策和支持同伴相关的赋权得分没有差异（p  > 0.05）。父母不太支持的青少年始终报告赋权程度最低。这项研究进一步表明，父母对 TGD 青少年的高度支持会产生积极的结果。然而，还需要做更多的工作来了解在照顾者最不支持的青少年中观察到的高水平的患者赋权，并探索医疗保健提供者/系统如何更好地支持父母不太支持、赋权最低的青少年。还需要进一步研究更细致的家长支持工具。