CMHA HKPR Supports Transgender Community on International Transgender Day of Visibility

Mar 31, 2023

Every March 31 is International Transgender Day of Visibility, an event that provides an opportunity to recognize the resilience and accomplishments of the transgender community.

CMHA HKPR offers our Trans Peer Outreach program, which provides supports and services for transgender and gender diverse people, to assist them to improve the quality of their lives through the provision of community-based, client centered care that supports positive interdependence.

A transgender person is someone whose gender identity is different from the gender they were assigned at birth. CMHA HKPR stands with our transgender community and recognizes the prejudices and barriers transgender individuals continue to face in society. In fact, it was only four years ago, in 2019, that the World Health Organization stopped designating “transsexualism” as a mental disorder.

According to Statistics Canada, compared to cisgender individuals, transgender people are far more likely to experience poor mental health and mental illness. In a 2018 survey, only 34 per cent of transgender individuals self-rated their mental health as positive, 65 per cent self-rated their mental health as fair or poor, nearly half had seriously contemplated suicide, and 61 per cent had been diagnosed with a mood or anxiety disorder.

To help improve supports and services for 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals, including transgender people, in post-secondary education, the Centre for Innovation in Campus Mental Health has created a toolkit that addresses the ways in which students may be faced with challenges and barriers on campus due to their identity, how those challenges may be invisible to those in positions of support and provides recommendations to address those barriers. Read Invisible Intersections: A Toolkit on Supporting 2SLGBTQ+ Students on Campus.

Get more information on mental health services for gender-diverse individuals here.