Mental Health Services for Transgender People: A Systematic Review Study

Transgender people are vulnerable to a high risk of mental health problems. These people face many problems in accessing health services. There is very little information about the needs of transgender people for health care and their concerns in this regard. This study aimed to examine the mental health services and needs of transgender people and their attitudes and experiences.

To select English-related studies in the databases of Science Direct, Google Scholar, Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Psych Info, Psych Lit, and Sociological Abstracts, the English keywords Trans, Transgender, Transphobia, Gender Dysphoria, Mental health, and Mental health service were searched from 2010 to 2022. Also, for Persian articles, the equivalent Persian keywords were searched in internal databases of the University Jihad Scientific Database (SID), Comprehensive Humanities, and Civilica Portal.  Finally, out of 231 studies, 12 articles were selected for review.

This study highlights the main challenges of transgender people. The results of this study showed that some of these challenges include access to health services tailored to the needs of transgender people and the need to develop mental health services for these people.

We can conclude that there are no medical services that meet the needs of transgender people and to improve the quality of life of these people, there is a need to develop mental health services and train specialists.