Jazz Jennings of TLC’s I Am Jazz is reportedly taking a mental health break before she moves from Florida to Massachusetts to attend Harvard University.
According to Radar Online, Jazz’s decision to delay her admission to the Ivy League school was influenced by an alleged decline in her mental health. A source close to Jazz’s family told the site that Jazz has been stressed out and showing signs of depression since as early as last fall.
“Jazz hasn’t been herself for months now,” the source continued. “She was not in the right position to be starting school and living on her own.”
Jazz, who announced on social media in May that she had decided to attend Harvard, took to social media on Tuesday to confirm the news of her delayed schooling to her fans.
“I wanted to share some news. After careful consideration I have decided to take a break before starting at Harvard,” she wrote. “It wasn’t an easy decision but it is the right one for me. These past few years have been so full and busy that I realized I could use some time to refocus and recenter to be the strongest version of myself.
“I am so grateful to have the support of my parents and Harvard in making this decision and look forward to focusing on some self-care and getting prepared to start this exciting new chapter in my life.”
While Jazz did not cite her mental health struggles as a reason for her decision, she told Thrive Global in June that she had some trepidation about entering this next chapter in her life, including the impact it may have on managing her anxiety and depression.
“I’m nervous. I feel like college is going to be a great place for me to step out of my shell, be independent and build new routines and habits and ways of living,” she said. “But it’s also a place where I can feel that anxiety and depression to an even greater degree than I do now, because there’s so much going on all the time.”
Jazz went on in the interview to say that in college, she wanted to “focus on taking care of myself and building good habits—that’s really my focus.”
RELATED STORY: Jazz Jennings Opens Up About Terrifying Complication She Experienced After Her Gender Confirmation Surgery: “My Vagina [Fell] Apart”
(Photos: Instagram)
48 Responses
Mental health is a very serious subject so take as much time you need no rush then when feel up to then regain your life. Hope you feel better soon
They did. Jazz has been in therapy since she was a child. It’s rude to misgender her.
It’s not rude it’s called having opinions.
He’s a boy end of
I must take a stand for the commenters on this site.
Many come here with many different opinions, backgrounds, beliefs, etc but what you don’t see here is phobias against the LGBTQ community or issues with race, ethnicity, etc.
Commenters here were disgusted by derrick (from the duggars) when he disrepected trans persons.
The comments being made are sound opinions about a child undergoing a life altering procedure. Not a slight against a community.
I’m proud of the commenters here and this site and can not ignore it being mislabeled.
The comments about a child doing a life altering surgery are perhaps misguided, but well intentioned. The comments that are misgendering her and calling her a freak are transphobic and rude. There’s no way around it.
How a person decides to live their life is their own business. Just because I disagree with it, doesn’t mean I’m gonna ignore them or turn my back on them. What truly matters to me is how a person is on the inside.
And before Sir Nibs jumps on here and says something snarky and perverted, by “what’s on the inside”, I mean THE HEART.
I thought I’d better clarify seeing as how this is an article about a transgender individual.
I’m not sure what is worse — the transphobia or the ignorance in this thread. First, Jazz was suicidal as a child due to her gender dysphoria. Transitioning at an early age probably saved her life. As a parent, I would not want to make permanent decisions about my child’s body before he is old enough to understand the consequences, but I don’t know what else her parents could have done. They did family therapy and individual therapy from the beginning.
Second, when you say things like “transgenderism is not real because God doesn’t make mistakes” it makes me feel like crap. I’m not trans, but I have a rare genetic disease that has made me severely disabled. There was definitely a mistake in my DNA so why is it so strange to think that someone could be “in the wrong body”. In my dreams, I’m not confined to a wheelchair or deformed. That’s not who I am on the inside. If changing my appearance made me feel more confident or more like how I feel, then I would do it in a heartbeat. I can’t criticize a transgender person for doing the same thing.
Most importantly, no matter how you frame it, Jazz has been through a lot and doesn’t need more negative energy thrown on her. Either she truly is a woman who was trapped in the wrong body or she is suffering from a mental disorder that causes her to feel like that. Either way, it sounds like an awful way to feel and I wish her the best in the future. She deserves to be happy and so does everyone else on earth.
It’s not about ignorance. It’s about the fact that Jazz, HIS family, other “transgender” people and their families are morally irresponsible. If God makes you a boy STAY A BOY, if God makes you a girl STAY A GIRL. He doesn’t make mistakes!!
If He makes you disabled (as He also made me), you were meant to be disabled. I have grown to learn (after many years of feeling sorry for myself) that their is a lesson in it somewhere, whether it be for the person who is disabled or for those around him or her.
I’m sad for her. A life-altering decision was made for her before she was of age to make it for herself. She never got to go through puberty, so she didn’t have that experience to consider before making this underage decision. These should be wonderful and exciting years for her, and it’s sad that she’s not able to enjoy them. I hope she gets some good therapeutic help.
Maybe you people should learn a bit more about being born in the wrong body and learn about the fact that many people are not 100% woman or man. Half of you might not be a 100% as you think.
Nature does make mistakes, a four leave clover is a mistake, why is it so hard to grasp that nature can make mistakes in humans too?
And why is it so hard to understand that people feel, know something went wrong at an early age?
And one other thing, why do you think doctors and health insurances help these young people? When they would be wrong and unethical, scientific, they wouldn’t.
They know Jazz has a better chance of becomming a healthy adult this way but they also know she will still struggle. Over half of the struggle is people like you, it is people like you, that don’t bother to educate themselves propperly first, that give her anxiety and depression.
As for being a bit bratty, I have to agree she does LOOK like that but that might be overcompensation or something else.
I hope Jazz can become herself completely, also mentally, with help. I hope she can come to a place where she doesn’t have that wall around her and just let people think and say what their minds let them think.
^^^ THIS… I can’t imagine someone wakes up one day and says “I want my life to be as difficult as possible and to be tormented by my classmates and society in general.” Trans is hard for me to wrap my head around and I consider myself fairly liberal. I can’t fully comprehend it, but hate is never an answer.
That issue should be separate from Jazz’s brattiness. Someone I know well knows her and apparently there’s truth to that. However I thought she handled creepy loser Derrick’s hateful comments with class. I’ll take Jazz over the backwards, misogynistic, incestuous pedophilia condoning Duggars any day. Jazz doesn’t condone or preach hate – the Duggars do and that’s not very Jesus-ey.
There’s an obscene amount of transphobia here. You people are awful.
You need to reread the comments.
The concern is about a CHILD making a permanent, irreversible decision as a CHILD.
There is NO transphobia.
This is full of ignorance
You are 100% correct 865AC. This Bella chick needs to be quiet, she is the one who is “full of ignorance”.
Maybe Jazz was meant to be trans. Also, you are not in charge of who speaks and who doesn’t.
I absolutely agree with you. I think it’s awful and terribly cruel.
When it comes to adults, live and let live. You want to mutilate your body and change how you dress in the hopes that will somehow make you complete, do you! As long as it’s not hurting anyone I could care less. But this poor boy was FIVE when he was assigned an agenda to carry out and put onto a platform. You think he ever thought that changing his mind or saying no was an option? This was his role, if he changed his mind all the attention and fame and money would be gone. No child should be encouraged to permanently mutilate their bodies (accompanied by infertility and loss of sexual function). We don’t condone plastic surgery on kids, and this is FAR more complicated and life changing.
I have no problems with adults doing whatever they need to their bodies, but Jazz was a child. Children do not have the mental capacity to make life altering decisions that cannot be reversed. Of course there are mental health problems. The mother exploited her child on tv and pushed a gender reassignment surgery to further keep the show alive. The decision for surgery should never be made until the brain is fully developed. My 13 year old regrets what he ate for breakfast. I couldn’t imagine a decision to have surgery. Not mature enough!
I read some articles on the effects of this surgery/medications for a teen. 2 that stood out are permanent infertilty and no sexual pleasure…ever!
How can a teen make such a decision?
Instead of making life altering decisions his family should’ve been getting him professional help.
I agree. But his parents saw $ signs early on and made sure to find ways to exploit their child in any way shape or form.
Jazz is not a likable person regardless gender. Jazz is mean spirited with how he/she/they/their snaps at everybody and bratty. All Jazz does on the show is lay around and whine just like Amber Portwood. If Amber gets into Harvard I will give up on mankind.
Jazz was a virgin when the D was removed. One can not orgasm with a man made V. Did my bro ever nut? Now it’s impossible. Yea, there is going to be some issues here. Way to think this through people. #nevernut #Ihearttonut #Nutdaily #imangrywithoutnutting #nutnutnut #ijustnutted #ilivetonut
This is ignorant too. It is possible to orgasm after gender reassignment. Talk to Carmen Carrera.
Another mental health excuse. Normal people still have to go about their daily lives with it…
I’m sorry, do you know how hard it is for a non-famous student to get into Harvard? I just dont see that brain power in her, and I’ve been watching for years.
Hopefully she decides to go someplace less stressful.
Yea I was wondering myself how the heck Jazz got into Harvard. Essentially Jazz didn’t finish high school and didn’t really participate in school activities. It makes no sense.
I can’t stand this kid. Such a brat in every episode I’ve ever seen and the parents just enable the bad attittude and self-centered behavior.
Same here, Magan.
“Jazz hasn’t been herself for months now,” This sums up the situation entirely. She/he is delaying college due to mental health reasons but apparently was capable of deciding to have gender reassignment surgery as a teen. This kid has had serious problems from the get go and is discovering being his “true self” wasn’t the answer.
Isn’t herself, because it’s a male, dna will never change that
Totally agree, also he isn’t himself because instead of focusing on the mental issues at hand, they decided to use their child as a political pawn and normalize gender dysmorphia.
Thank God there’s finally some common sense! Feeling like you’re something you biologically are not shouldn’t be enabled or encouraged. This child needed intensive therapy to get at the route cause of the issue, not hormones and surgeries. It always gets me how the same group of people that say gender is just a social construct think that you need to try to turn yourself into the opposite sex if you like things that are traditionally for the gender. Your son can play with dolls and like pink without you putting him on hormone blockers and then estrogen and letting him cut his pecker off. It blows my mind that all of that is legal to do to minors!
Hmmm. Struggling with mental health. Ya don’t say!? No sh!t!! Any normal person knows why! And struggling with depression is no shocker either. HE was waaaay too young to transition & neither him nor his parents will ever admit it. That is child abuse! He will NEVER be a female & will always struggle with depression & mental health issues.
Exactly, sassy pants.
The comments on this article are Disgusting. Stop with the transphobia & deliberate misgendering of her!
Even chromosomes are not always as simple as xx or xy. Look up intersex.
Your born male or female, end of.
Stop posting under my username name, it’s annoying and I’m REALLY starting to get pissed off!!!
No, one can be intersex which means their chromosomes are not xx or xy. It’s not an opinion. It’s a medical fact.
It’s embarrassing that you know so little on the subject. Look up intersex. There are more combinations than xx and xy.
I always wondered how she got into Harvard. She never showed any interest in the academics on the show. I think she dropped out of high school and went to an alternative high school. Maybe she should go to a local college and take classes. I just don’t see her ever going to Harvard. Agree, you have to have the smarts to go there and the average person is not that smart.
*He Jazz is a boy.
I have to agree. Her parents should’ve waited until she was a mature adult mentally. It’s a sad story.