Milwaukee-area teen TJ Esser told his family he was transgender when he was 13 and found them very supportive. Many teens aren’t that lucky.
Transgender students “suffer from so much mental health because it’s not always an open place in schools to be who you are,” says Esser, who is now 16.Whether they get that care often depends on their parents and the availability of treatment in their area. Dr. Wun Jung Kim, a child psychiatrist and professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University says psychiatry is made more challenging by the lack of awareness many parents and grandparents have about the field, as well as the lack of specialists.
USA Today