Interesting Research

When I do cultural competency training sometimes I get asked clinical questions, sadly I am not qualified to answer; my MSW is in community organizing not clinical.

However, some of the questions that I am asked is about co-occurrence with other diagnoses such as Autism Spectrum Disorders. There is a research paper from Transgender Health online about that,

Gender Variance Among Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Retrospective Chart Review
By Aron Janssen, Howard Huang, and Christina Duncan
Volume: 1 Issue 1: February 18, 2016

ABSTRACT
Purpose: Increasing clinical evidence suggests an overrepresentation of gender variance (GV) among patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). This retrospective chart review aims to contribute to the existing literature on co-occurring ASD and gender dysphoria (GD). We compare the rate of parent-reported GV in patients with an ASD diagnosis to that of parent-reported GV in a normative nonreferred data set.

Methods: Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) charts were collected from 492 children and adolescents (409 natal males and 83 natal females) aged 6–18 years who have received a diagnosis of ASD at the New York University Child Study Center. Parent-reported GV was determined through endorsement of CBCL sex item 110, which assesses the presence of gender-related issues. We calculated the odds ratio of endorsement of item 110 between our ASD sample and the CBCL sample data.

Results: The subjects diagnosed with ASD were 7.76 times more likely to report GV than the CBCL sample. This finding was statistically significant. About 5.1% of the patients in the ASD group and 0.7% of the CBCL nonreferred group endorsed sex item 110. 5.1% of natal males and 4.8% of natal females endorsed sex item 110. Neither gender nor age influenced the rate of endorsement.

Conclusion: This finding supports the growing research suggesting a heightened co-occurrence rate of ASD and GD. Focus should be placed upon improving our understanding of the nature of this co-occurrence and on gender identity development within the atypical development of ASD.

This is something that is very important; why is there correlation between ASD and GD. I have also found research papers that report left handedness and dyslexia are more prevalent in the LGBT populations.

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This afternoon I am giving the third in three lectures on gender variant students in the Multicultural Education classes