Final Public Comment Period For Proposed DSM-5 Criteria Ends June 15
This is an extremely important issue. Gender Dysphoria will continue to be pathologized by the psychological and psychiatric community, creating more barriers for transgender and gender non-conforming people from receiving appropriate medical care and treatment with regards to transition.
Their specific diagnostic criteria continue to characterize gender identities and expressions that differ from birth-assigned roles as pathological and therefore contradict access to medical transition care, for those who need it, rather than lower its barriers.
Read the full article to see What You Can Do Now.
Kelley Winters, Ph.D.
GID Reform Advocates
http://www.gidreform.org
The American Psychiatric Association announced a third and final period of public comment on proposed diagnostic criteria for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), ending June 15. Criteria for the draft diagnostic categories of Gender Dysphoria in Children and Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents or Adults (formerly Gender Identity Disorder, or GID) are unchanged from the second round proposal in May, 2011. The Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Workgroup of the DSM-5 Task Force only partially responded to concerns raised about the GID diagnosis by community advocates, allies and care providers. Their specific diagnostic criteria continue to characterize gender identities and expressions that differ from birth-assigned roles as pathological and therefore contradict access to medical transition care, for those who need it, rather than lower its barriers.
Worse yet, the punitive and scientifically capricious diagnosis of Transvestic Disorder (formerly…
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genderqueer.me 
Psychiatric Industry has way too much power. They should be universally demoted back to counselling and psychoanalysis. Classifying human experience, emotion and states of being as illness is lunacy.
Better days are coming. They have to. People are slowly waking-up to see they have lost their control somewhere along the way, and they are taking it back. We all have to.
Veggiewitch ♥
So my dad was reading an article about a trans person, and he was pretty upset at reading about the term “Gender Identity Disorder.” He said that, from a doctor’s perspective, the label disorder has a particular clinical meaning, which indicates something is wrong, or not functioning properly, and needs to be fixed or treated.
It was very endearing how he got up in arms about it: “That is just plain incorrect. It’s a travesty! You are not disordered. You are transgender, and that’s just a part of you. There is nothing wrong with you. There is no disorder. Really, psychiatrists got it all wrong. Don’t they understand the basic practices of medicine?”
The feeling that one’s physical gender does not coincide with one’s brain sex or gender self-identity is a bad feeling and, I think, can be properly considered a form of dysphoria (a bad feeling). The treatment for this condition is generally hormone therapy and in many cases SRS.
In general, people who are entirely normal and have no complaints don’t seek medical or psychiatric care. If they did, e.g., if they asked an ophthalmologist the following, “I have brown eyes, and a want blue eyes, and I don’t want to wear blue-iris contact lenses,” I think most ophthalmologists would refuse to “treat” such a condition. And if they did, I seriously doubt whether any insurance company would pay for it.
Completely “non-pathologizing” the disconcordance of self-assessed gender identity and physical gender or even chromosomal gender and assigning these conditions with names that suggest that they are no more different from the norm than brown or blue eyes would have the effect of making them conditions for which no treatment is indicated and for which no insurance funds, public or private, should be expended.
I don’t think that the Trans community in their untreated state wants to be considered as normal and therefore in need of no treatment. Brain sex should be given precedence over any other indicators of gender. Perhaps the condition should be called “brain sex and body sex disconcordance”.
Furthermore, there is mounting evidence to suggest that transsexualism in many cases may be due to environmental hormone disruptors. If brain and body sex disconcordance is considered normal, then efforts to eliminate hormone disruptors would be considered unnecessary and lose its priority in the effort to improve the healthiness of our environment.
None of these effects of depathologizing GID completely, in my opinion, would do anyone any good.
Sincerely,
James L. Hopkins, MD
James, thanks for your explanation, and I entirely agree with you.
The problem we’re seeing in the DSM V Revision is the language and conceptual framework they are employing in including transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. “Gender Identity Disorder” is problematic because having gender discordance is not in itself a disorder – as you point out – it’s the dysphoria that is the condition to be addressed.
It’s akin to saying that a gay person suffers from “homosexuality disorder” when really, their state of being is gay, which is not a disorder, though they might suffer from depression and anxiety which needs to be treated.
Transsexual people very often have the additional medical / biological component of treatment, which distinguishes it from many other psychological conditions. One point in favor of the inclusion of any sort of gender identity diagnosis in the DSM is so that transgender people can legitimize their condition in the medical community and hopefully gain easier access to medical, legal, and social transition. The drawback is that the psychology community seems to be lagging behind the Standards of Care (v7, the latest version, is very inclusive). They interpret their role as a gatekeeper to transition, rather than as a supportive medical provider. Since most psychologists abide by the DSM, it is important to emphasize the correct language so that transsexualism and gender non-conformity are not seen as conditions to be “fixed” (conform to assigned gender), rather the dysphoria is seen as something to be treated (by transitioning, by social inclusion, by legal facilities, etc).