• Posted April 22, 2026

Bullying, Politics Harm Mental Health Of Gender-Diverse Teens

Gender-diverse teenagers who are bullied are more likely to suffer escalating psychological distress than other teens, particularly if they live in a state with repressive gender identity laws, a new study says.

These teens are more likely to experience psychotic-like episodes – feeling unusually suspicious of others, thinking others are laughing at them, feeling threatened or hearing sounds that others do not, researchers reported April 21 in JAMA Network Open.

“What we're seeing is that stigma has measurable neuropsychiatric consequences,” senior researcher Carrie Bearden, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA, said in a news release.

“Bullying and unsupportive legislation are not abstract policy concerns; they translate into real and serious symptoms in adolescents' day-to-day lives,” Bearden said.

The proportion of U.S. teens identifying as transgender or gender-diverse doubled between 2017 and 2022, increasing from 0.7% to 1.4% of all teenagers, researchers said in background notes.

For the new study, researchers analyzed data from a large study that has tracked American teens across 21 sites in 17 states since they were 9 years old.

The team assessed nearly 8,500 teens with an average age of 13, and then followed 4,200 teenagers between 2017 and 2022 to track their mental health.

Gender-diverse teens reported significantly higher rates of bullying and psychotic-like experiences, with the bullying accounting for much of their mental health problems, researchers said.

Likewise, teens in states that consistently lacked supportive gender identity legislation showed significantly greater increases in psychotic-like experiences over four years, the study found.

These findings track with earlier studies that found as much as a 72% increase in suicide attempts among transgender and gender-diverse youth in places where suppressive gender identity laws have been passed, researchers said.

Chronic exposure to bullying and anti-trans politics might cause gender-diverse teens to maintain a state of heightened alertness, constantly scanning for potential threats, researchers said. 

This sort of hypervigilance can set a person up to develop psychotic symptoms.

“Without clinicians asking the right questions about a patient’s social environment, we may miss out on robust treatment targets,” said lead researcher Dylan Hughes, a clinical psychology graduate student at UCLA.

“At the same time, policy makers – and voters – also play an important role,” Hughes said in a news release. “Voting on a policy with the intention of helping our youth should include consideration of the policy’s downstream effects on these kids’ mental health.” 

More information

The Trevor Project has more on anti-bullying policies in schools.

SOURCE: UCLA, news release, April 21, 2026