Abstract
Objective: To determine the prevalence of depression amongst the transgender community and assess the
relationship of socio-demographic features with depression.
Study design: Cross-sectional study.
Place and Study duration: Rawalpindi/Islamabad, Pakistan. Oct to Dec 2016
Materials and Methods: The studied population accounted for one hundred and forty-two transgender persons.
The psychometric assessment was done with Beck depressive inventory II (BDI-II) to evaluate depressive
symptoms. The sample was categorized as having no, mild, moderate, and severe depressive symptoms. The
presence of depressive symptoms was also studied for its relationship with the age of the persons, smoking habits,
financial status, illicit substances use, and educational history in the transgender community of
Islamabad/Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Results: Among the 142 studied participants mean age was found 39.55 ± 6.18. Among them 45.1% didn’t have
symptomatology suggestive of Depression, However, 31.7% had mild symptoms, 12.7% had moderate and 10.6%
were having severe symptoms suggestive of depression. Using Binary logistic regression, it was concluded that
the presence of symptoms suggesting depression was having a significant association with the use of illicit
substances.
Conclusion: The study revealed a high prevalence of depressive symptoms in the transgender of Rawalpindi/
Islamabad. The use of Illicit substances like tobacco, cannabis, opiates, and alcohol should be prohibited and
those using these should be routinely screened for the presence of other mental health issues to timely diagnose
and treat them.
Muhammad Azeem Khan, Aneza Jalil, Usama Bin Zubair, Shumaila Tasleem, Sara Afzal, Ibad ul Haq. (2020) Prevalence and sociodemographic correlates of depressive symptoms among transgenders, The Journal of Rawalpindi Medical College, Volume 24, Issue 3.
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