Trans young people’s experiences of stigma, discrimination, and mental health when accessing gender-affirming care: a participatory and collaborative exploration

Engagement of diverse young people (e.g., gender diverse or neurodivergent young people) in qualitative health research is an issue of growing interest. While qualitative approaches can provide rich insight into how young people experience their health and related phenomena, more traditional methods which rely on verbal communication (e.g., interviews, focus groups) may not be engaging or accessible for all young people. In this paper, we describe the application of a participatory and collaborative method with eight trans young people, which involved workshops exploring participants’ experiences of stigma, discrimination, and mental health. We describe our findings and examine the utility of using participatory and collaborative methods to collect qualitative data with gender diverse and neurodivergent young people, a particularly salient concern in paediatric trans health research.