Changes Are Coming

Changes for the better are coming for trans healthcare, maybe one day we will be taken out of the DSM like gays and lesbians almost fifty years ago.

The World's Biggest Health Organization May Do Something Big to Help the Trans Community
Here's the catch.
Mother Jones
By Will Greenberg
June 20, 2016

Despite the strides made towards transgender equality in the United States, discrimination against transgender people remains a huge problem worldwide. In many countries and communities, violence, stigma, and a lack of legal recognition push transgender people to the margins of society. And the many hurdles transgender people face on a daily basis also contribute to significant health risks, according to a new study by the Lancet medical journal.

According to the study, published this week as part of a research series on gaps in transgender health, most doctors have no training on trans-specific care like hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery. That leaves them lacking the ability to treat patients interested in transitioning. But perhaps the biggest barrier to care transgender people currently face is social stigma and judgment, which prevents doctors from accepting trans patients in the first place.

There are changes coming to the ICD-10 which is kind of like an international DSM but medical diseases and there are recommendations that…

The authors might soon get their wish. The WHO manual is being updated in 2018, and a WHO working group, of which Winter [Sam Winter, a professor of sexology at Curtin University in Australia] was a part, has recommended that the next version replace transsexualism, dual-role transvestism, and gender identity disorder of childhood with "gender incongruence," and define it as a condition "related to sexual health” as opposed to a mental health disorder. A WHO representative confirmed plans to make these changes to the manual.

Sexual orientation was removed from the DSM back in the early seventies, but we are different from gays and lesbians in that we need medical assistance for us to transition, we need hormones and for those who want it, surgery and therein lays the quandary, how to get medical assistance without the stigma attached with being a “mental disorder.”

Even though the DSM changed the label of Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Dysphoria you only have to listen to politicians to understand that most people do not understand the difference. To them if it is in the DSM means that you are crazy and that is why we need it taken out of the DSM and into the ICD.