Inclusion of Transgender Populations in Clinical Trials related to Mental Health Interventions in the last decade

BACKGROUND: Research in mental health has always been skewed towards gender-normative samples. Though it has been seen that transgender populations suffer significantly more adverse mental health outcomes than their cis-gender counterparts, there is barely any effort for the inclusion of gender diverse populations in clinical trials. AIM: To identify published and upcoming clinical trials which cater to mental health needs of MATERIALS AND METHODS: A search was conducted on PubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov database for identifying published trials in the last ten years as well as upcoming trials related to mental health which included transgender individuals in the sample. Observational studies, studies related to medical/surgical treatment unrelated to mental health, and those with public health interventions were excluded. RESULT: In the last ten years, only 11 clinical trials were identified on PubMed which deals with mental health of transgender individuals, all after 2016. Average sample size was 554.82, and those with only LGBT samples had average sample size of 190.71. The average proportion of transgender population in LGBT-focussed studies was 27.8 and those including non-LGBT populations was 3.87. Majority studies were focussed on substance use (45.45%). In ClinicalTrials.gov, only 15 clinical trials were identified which dealt with mental health related interventions in transgender populations. CONCLUSION: There is a dearth of clinical trials dealing with the transgender population, which may limit our understanding of mental health interventions in the said population.