Utah’s transgender teens have previously indicated to state officials they are 3 ½ times more likely than their peers to consider taking their own lives, almost 4 ½ times more likely to experience severe depression and are two to three times more likely to experiment with drugs and alcohol.
But those figures documenting transgender students’ emotional struggles in conservative Utah are no longer available to the public, having been quietly purged from a state website.
Links to data on how transgender students’ mental health is faring on the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Substance Abuse and Mental Health site have been deleted, while other demographic-specific reports remain accessible.
Changes to the website come as orders from the White House increasingly act to erase the visibility of transgender Americans, including ordering public health data that President Donald Trump’s administration has labeled “gender ideology” taken down.
According to web page snapshots preserved by the Internet Archive, “Transgender Student Profile Report[s]” compiled from the statewide Student Health and Risk Prevention survey, commonly known as SHARP, were available on the Utah Office of Substance Use and Mental Health site on Feb. 2. By March 4 those reports had disappeared.
Read the full report at sltrib.com.
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.