Does hormone treatment help Polish transgender individuals cope with stress?
Abstract
Introduction: The results of Polish studies indicate that transgender individuals have lower quality of life than cisgender people. Research shows that hormone treatment and transition-related surgeries can buffer the stress’ impact on the quality of life of transgender people. The objective of this study was to explore whether hormone treatment and transition-related surgeries moderate in the relationship between stress and life satisfaction in transgender individuals.
Material and methods: One hundred twenty-four transgender individuals in the age between 18 and 53 years old (M = 23.60; SD = 6.32) participated in the presented study — 41 transgender women and 83 transgender men. Recruitment of the respondents took place via the Internet. SWLS, PSS-10 and authors’ own questionnaire on hormone treatment were used.
Results: There were significant differences in the level of stress between transgender individuals using hormone treatment and those who did not. The ones who used hormone treatment had lower levels of perceived stress than those, who did not. The analysis showed the negative and strong relationship between perceived stress and life satisfaction in studied sample. Results of hormone treatment were negatively and weakly related to transgender individuals’ life satisfaction. The relationship between hormone treatment and perceived stress was not significant.
Conclusions: This manuscript draws attention to the important role of coping strategies in Polish transgender people. Psychologists and specialists working with transgender people should try to find significant predictors of transgender people’s life satisfaction. This is important because finding significant resources will improve transgender individuals’ quality of life.
Keywords: transgendertransition-related surgerieshormone treatmentstresslife satisfaction
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