Is There a Decline in Transgenderism and Increase in Mental Health?

Families, communities, states, and nations are stronger when individuals understand that there are only two genders. Parents should rest easier knowing that there has been “a rapid decline in young people identifying as transgender and queer since 2023” – according to a new report by Eric Kaufmann, a politics professor at the University of Buckingham in England. Kaufman’s report also shows “evidence of improving mental health among students.” There is more research needed to “confirm the causes.”

The report was released through Buckingham University and the Center for Heterodox Social Science. It was compiled and written by Erick Kaufmann, and he “drew from surveys conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Andover Phillips Academy and Brown University. Eva Terry at The Deseret News shared the following summary of the report. 

Each institution found college students increasingly identifying as transgender and non-binary until from 2020 until 2022 and 2023.

At Andover Phillips in 2023, 9.2% of students surveyed identified as non-binary, and in 2025, the rate dropped to 3%. Similarly, in 2022 and 2023 at Brown University, 5% of students identified as non-binary, but the rate dropped to 2.6% in 2025.

In 2025, fewer college freshmen identify as LGBTQ+ than college seniors, “suggesting that the decline will continue,” the report says.

What caused the transgender identification free fall?

There doesn’t appear to be a correlation between transgender-identification rates dropping with lower social media use, religious revival or a political shift toward conservatism, Kaufman wrote. Social media usage among young people has not dropped as of 2024.

And “despite high correlations between sexual/gender identity and political attitudes within individuals, the over-time trend in gender and sexuality seems relatively independent of political, cultural and religious beliefs,” Kaufmann said.

However, there is some evidence that improvements in mental health have reduced bisexual, transgender and queer (BTQ+) identification….

What role did the pandemic play in this?

Covid-19 “provided a natural experiment,” Kaufmann said. The World Health Organization found a direct correlation between rapidly increased depression and anxiety rates and the pandemic.

If, as the data suggests, mental illness changes sexual and gender identity, there should have been a peak in 2021 and 2022, following the pandemic, he said. But the spike in LGBTQ+ identification happened in 2022 and 2023, one year after peak mental illness rates among young people.

“While a one-year lag between mental health improvements and LGBT reduction is possible, we must explain why there was a delayed pandemic effect for sexual orientation and gender identity but not for mental health,” Kaufmann said.

“Woke beliefs played a role in the emergence of BTQ+ identity and mental illness identification in the 2010s, but these have since become substantially uncoupled, obeying their own distinct rhythms,” Kaufmann wrote. Tracking this split could provide more insight into why transgender identification rose until 2023 and has since fallen, he said.

He added that further research is needed to test other hypotheses….