So being transgender is not a mental illness.
BelleSorciere
Member Posts: 2,108
I wanted to address this because it was brought up so many times during the forum's own time of troubles.
The claim was made that the WHO views "being transgender" as a mental illness and that it is bad to legitimize mental illness. The first part of this is not entirely accurate. The ICD-10 does categorize gender identity disorder as a mental illness, but WHO and the ICD-11 is moving away from that definition.
The claim was made that the WHO views "being transgender" as a mental illness and that it is bad to legitimize mental illness. The first part of this is not entirely accurate. The ICD-10 does categorize gender identity disorder as a mental illness, but WHO and the ICD-11 is moving away from that definition.
TGEU welcomes that in the ICD 11 beta draft section 7: Mental and behavioural disorders (used to be section F in the ICD 10) the category ”gender identity disorders” has been removed. As well other stigmatizing categories from the former F65 category such as Fetishism, Fetishistic transvestitism or sadomasochism do not show any more.In the US, the DSM-5 and the APA have already moved away from that definition.
The WHO proposes a ”gender incongruence” category under the new section 6: ”Conditions related to sexual health”. The new category includes both Gender incongruence of adolescence and adulthood (6A50) and Gender incongruence of childhood (6A51). Not labelling trans people as mentally ill anymore will be an important step forward and will help to reduce stigma.
To include ”Gender incongruence of adolescence and adulthood” in the sexual health category is something that trans human rights NGOs such as Global Action for Trans* Equality (GATE), Stop Trans Pathologization (STP) and Transgender Europe (TGEU) have been demanding. However, the definition needs to be clearly focusing on trans people with a need for medical treatment.
In the old DSM-IV, GID focused on the “identity” issue — namely, the incongruity between someone’s birth gender and the gender with which he or she identifies. While this incongruity is still crucial to gender dysphoria, the drafters of the new DSM-5 wanted to emphasize the importance of distress about the incongruity for a diagnosis. (The DSM-5 uses the term gender rather than sex to allow for those born with both male and female genitalia to have the condition.)Now, I'm not trying to throw mentally ill people under the bus ('cause I am one of them) so I will add that there is nothing wrong with legitimizing mental illness. I certainly appreciate it when my mental illness is treated as a legitimate, valid issue rather than whatever not legitimizing mental illness involves. Part of treating mental illness as legitimate is understanding which treatments are available, which treatments actually work, and ensuring that mentally ill clients receive necessary support and treatment.
This shift reflects recognition that the disagreement between birth gender and identity may not necessarily be pathological if it does not cause the individual distress, said Robin Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist and co-author of the psychology textbook “Abnormal Psychology” (Worth Publishers, 2009). For instance, many transgender people — those who identify with a gender different than the one they were assigned at birth — are not distressed by their cross-gender identification and should not be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, Rosenberg said.
Transgender people and their allies have pointed out that distress in gender dysphoria is not an inherent part of being transgender. This sets it apart from many other disorders in the DSM, because if someone is depressed, for example, he or she is, almost by definition, distressed as part of depression. In contrast, the distress that accompanies gender dysphoria arises as a result of a culture that stigmatizes people who do not conform to gender norms, Rosenberg said.
In this regard, the change resembles the elimination of homosexuality from the manual 40 years ago.
Post edited by BelleSorciere on
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Comments
Ultimately, the psychiatric community only deems something a mental illness if it causes them distress or inhibits their functioning. Just being different or abnormal is not sufficient for a condition to be a mental illness; it has to have some actual negative impact on the person. You can think or do or feel whatever you like, and as long as it's not causing a problem, it's not considered a disorder.
Now, if you are physically uncomfortable with your body as is, that would constitute a disorder, much as anorexia is a disorder--it's actually making you dysfunctional (eating too little) and unhappy. But merely identifying as transgender and being okay with it doesn't hurt you, so they stopped defining it as a mental illness.
I think seeing some of the more extreme voices that came out during this recent "controversy" show why that might be, because voices like theirs belong to people who may have trans kids (or adults) in their families or have positions of authority over them (teachers, bosses at work, etc). It's especially bad for people that encounter constant isolation, guilt tactics, disgust, passive aggressive or open ridicule, and/or other social/interpersonal abuse as a result of who they are, so with that in mind I want to say I really appreciate how the mods and the vast majority of the regulars on here didn't stand for that nonsense time and time again as it reared the more vicious of its forms during the recent mess.
I've felt very welcomed and accepted here, to an extent that overshadows the rare few times it's been elsewise. You're all great!
I posted a link in another thread that I can't seem to find again (the thread or the link) which showed an aggregate of multiple studies conducted since ~2004 showing that transition nearly always has positive outcomes for trans people.