Image above: Capitol police lead a rehearsal parade for the 60th Presidential Inauguration in Washington D.C., Jan. 12, 2025. More than 5,000 military members from across all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces, including Reserve and National Guard components, will provide ceremonial support and defense support of civil authorities during the inaugural period. U.S. Department of Defense photo by Staff Sgt. Trevor Rhynes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
In early 2025, the reality for transgender youth drastically shifted in the United States, after a deluge of executive orders from the president directly threatened and restricted rights for the demographic. Transgender youth already face increased mental health distress compared to their peers, so did these events further decline their mental health? And how did it affect their parents?
New research from Psychological Science showed that in the months following the 2025 U.S. presidential inauguration, political actions against trans people particularly took a toll on the parents of transgender children, including sharp increases in depression and anxiety. “Our findings identify an immediate potential cost of the current political environment for supportive parents of transgender youth,” the study’s authors wrote.
For these findings, researchers used data that surveyed 73 transgender and 87 cisgender children, as well as their respective parents from 2022 to 2024. Data included weekly surveys that researchers administered in the seven weeks after the 2025 inauguration. The survey asked questions related to the participant’s demographics and gender identity, as well as their mental health and well-being, measuring depression, anxiety, and positive affect (one’s internal confidence and happiness).
In their analysis, the study found that prior to the 2024 presidential election and 2025 presidential inauguration, parents of both transgender and cisgender children had similar levels of depression and positive affect. But after the election, and especially after the inauguration, researchers observed a marked increase in depression and drop in positive affect for parents with transgender children. Their anxiety also became worse compared to before the inauguration.
Notably, in the weeks following the inauguration, there were significant spikes in depression and anxiety, and parents attributed these declines to attacks on transgender support. “This past week has been one of the worst weeks I can recall,” one parent wrote in a survey after the inauguration. Another cited how they were overcome with “denial and grief.”
In contrast, the mental health of parents of cisgender youth remained fairly stable, even though they generally had the same political ideology and similar outlooks on the new administration.
The findings that parents of transgender youth are sensitive to threats to their children is consistent with past research. “Parents more often anticipate the longer-term threats,” the authors wrote. In this case, it’s likely the parents were anticipating the effects of President Trump’s executive orders banning gender-affirming care for minors, punishing schools for supporting transgender students, and stopping transgender girls from participating in their gender-identifying team. All of these policy changes could affect their child’s healthcare access or the amount of prejudice they end up facing.
Interestingly, transgender youth mental health did not change much over the course of the study, though they showed decreases in positive emotions in the weeks following the inauguration and had worse anxiety than cisgender youth after the inauguration. The study’s authors noted a need for additional research with a larger sample before making strong conclusions. It’s likely that mental health declines may worsen in transgender youth beyond the time frame of the current study. “Transgender youths’ responses may reflect the reality that, in the time of our study, effects of executive orders had largely not been implemented,” they wrote.
These delayed effects, as well as how the declining well-being of parents may intertwine with that of transgender youth, are key points for further research, the authors noted. Looking at parents with a broader range of political ideologies, like transgender youth with parents who don’t support their identities or studying more families that are low-income or racially diverse, are also sources of future inquiry.
As the authors wrote, “as backlash toward transgender people (and youth in particular) intensifies, identifying and understanding these costs, and whom they affect, is of critical importance.”
Feedback on this article? Email [email protected] or login to comment.
Reference
Leshin, R. A., Kodipady, A., & Olson, K. R. (2026). Reduced mental health and well-being in parents of transgender youth following the 2025 U.S. presidential inauguration. Psychological Science, 37(8), 586-599.
