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July 22, 2012

Transgender activists: We're not sick

Advocates urge psychiatrists to revise diagnostic terms so the community isn't viewed as innately mentally ill

By LISA LEFF The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - Does a woman who strongly believes she was meant to be a man have a mental condition or a medical problem? Does a man who cross-dresses need psychological help? What about a boy who pretends to be a girl in make-believe games and chooses only female playmates?

The nation's psychiatric establishment is wrestling with these questions, among others, as it works to overhaul its diagnostic manual for the first time in almost two decades.

Advocates have spent years lobbying the American Psychiatric Association to rewrite or even remove the categories typically used to diagnose transgender people, arguing that terms like "gender identity disorder" and "transvestic fetishism" promote discrimination by broad-brushing a diverse population with the stigma of mental illness.

"The label of mental defectiveness really places a burden on trans people to continually prove our competence in our affirmed roles," said Colorado scholar Kelley Winters, who's helped lead the push for changes.

Although the association's new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is not scheduled to be printed until the end of the year, the updates are taking shape after three rounds of proposed changes. Professionals who have been part of or closely observing the amendment process say the latest wording, while not going as far as many advocates wanted, respects the broader shift in society's understanding and acceptance of what it means to be transgender since the last major revision of the manual was published in 1994.

"All psychiatric diagnoses occur within a cultural context," said New York psychiatrist Jack Drescher, a member of the APA subcommittee working on the issue. "We know there is a whole community of people out there who are not seeking medical attention and live between the two binary categories (of male and female). We wanted to send the message that the therapist's job isn't to pathologize."

The most symbolic change under consideration so far for the manual's fifth edition, known as the DSM-V for short, is a new name for gender identity disorder, the diagnosis now given to adults, adolescents and children with "a strong and persistent cross-gender identification." In the manual's next incarnation, individuals displaying "a marked incongruence between one's experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender" would be diagnosed instead with "gender dysphoria," a term that comes from the Greek word for emotional distress.

While the shift may seem purely semantic, switching the emphasis from a disorder that by definition all transgender people possess to a temporary mental state that only some might possess marks real progress, according to Dana Beyer, a retired eye surgeon who helped the Washington Psychiatric Society make recommendations for the chapter on "Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders."

"A right-winger can't go out and say all trans people are mentally ill because if you are not dysphoric, that can't be diagnosed from afar," Beyer said. "It no longer matters what your body looks like, what you want to do to it, all of that is irrelevant as far as the APA goes."

Persuading the psychiatric profession to redefine who qualifies for its care has precedent as a civil rights issue. In 1973, the APA, responding to pressure from the gay and lesbian community, concluded that same-sex attraction alone was a normal part of human experience, not an illness.

Although it took another 14 years for all conditions related to homosexuality to be lifted from the DSM, the earlier shift is regarded as a major milestone in the gay rights movement, one that paved the way for gays to adopt children, get married and serve in the military.

Like gay men and lesbians before them, transgender people have seen the APA's language cited to their disadvantage. Dan Karasic, a San Francisco psychiatrist who has suggested changes to the DSM-V through his affiliation with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, cited a Utah case in which he has been asked to prepare expert witness testimony involving a transgender woman who is at risk of losing the children she fathered before her transition.

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