"Legislation anxiety" is plaguing trans people nationwidehttps://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/09/legislation-anxiety-is-plaguing-trans-people-nationwide/ 🔗Greg Owen (26 Sep 2026)
A new study published in the journal APA PsycNet finds that legislation impacting or discriminating against transgender and gender-diverse individuals can cause more psychological distress than even personal experiences of discrimination.
Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University used survey data from 346 transgender and gender diverse adults in the United States to examine their anxiety levels around anti-transgender legislation, discrimination based on their identities, and the level of support and community connection they experienced.
The new analysis, parsed from data originally collected in 2024, revealed the outsized influence of anti-trans legislation on the respondents' mental health. That effect has likely only grown worse in the intervening years with the second Trump administration's crusade against transgender identity.
"We found that above and beyond everything else in the model, including active experiences of discrimination, that anti-trans legislation anxiety was driving psychological distress," Catherine Wall, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at the university and the study's lead author, told VCU News.
"In a lot of ways, our participants who were talking about fear and expressing fear were viewing a lot of the anti-trans legislation as an existential threat," Wall said. The legislation posed "a threat to their very existence, threats to their very lives, and threats to the lives of all trans people around them."------------------------------
@Sarah B
