Is Gender Dysphoria a Mental Illness?
Dr. Z discusses gender dysphoria—the number one question she gets asked all the time by cisgender people as well as gender diverse individuals: whether gender dysphoria is a mental illness.
Before she can give you her professional opinion on what she thinks, she'd like to share with you some of the historical context to give you a little bit better understanding of what we're talking about today.
Gender dysphoria first entered the DSM-3 in 1980. If you don't know what the DSM is: DSM (or known as Diagnostic Statistical Manual) is a handbook of mental disorders published by American Psychiatric Association. Right now it's in its fifth revision—the DSM-5. Gender dysphoria first entered it in 1980.
Essentially what it is: a handbook that is used by people like herself and mental health professionals all over the United States as well as the world in order to derive a diagnosis.
DSM is really helpful in so much as it enables her to see how certain symptomatic clusters fit together to constitute a diagnosis. What's really important to keep in mind: not everything in DSM is a mental illness.
Watch to find out her professional opinion and why removing it from DSM is problematic.
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REFERENCES & SOURCES
Rametti, G., Carrillo, B., Gomez-Gil, E., Junque, C., Segovia, S., Gomez, A., & Guillamon, A. (2011a). White matter microstructure in female to male transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment: A diffusion tensor imaging study. J Psychiatric Res 45: 199-204.
Rametti, G., Carrillo, B., Gomez-Gil, E., Junque, C.,Zubiarre-Elorza, L., Segovia, S., & Guillamon, A. (2010b). The microstructure of white matter in male to female transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment: A DTI study. J Psychiatric Res 45: 949-954.
Zubiaurre-Elorza, L., Junque, C., Gomez-Gil, E., Segovia, S., Carrillo, B., Rametti, G., & Guillamon, A. (2013). Cortical thickness in untreated transsexuals. Cerebr Cortex 23: 2855-2862.
