Exploring the relationship between cognition and mental health in intersex participants in the UK Biobank study.

The physical and mental health of intersex individuals is woefully understudied. A recent survey of intersex individuals found high rates of self-reported cognitive issues such as difficulty remembering and concentrating as well as high rates of mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety. The current study explores whether cognitive differences are observed between 353 intersex and over 400,000 non-intersex people using a latent model of cognitive tasks derived from measures in the UK (United Kingdom) Biobank study. There were no differences in intelligence between intersex people and non-intersex people. We found significantly lower executive function and processing speed in intersex individuals versus non-intersex individuals. However, after accounting for mental health differences regression and case-control matching, there were no significant differences in executive function or processing speed between intersex individuals and non-intersex individuals. Mental health differences between intersex and non-intersex individuals may account for differences in cognitive factor scores.