You must log in or register to comment.
The “trans people are mentally ill” is always a funny one when anti-trans people try to use it.
Let’s take that statement as true. The illness could best be described as the gender of the mind not matching the gender of the body. So you only have two basic options to treat this “illness”: change the mind or change the body, so that the two match. Changing the mind is notoriously difficult and prone to unexpected consequences for all sorts mental illnesses, while changing the body is fairly well established practice at this point.
So long story short, if trans people are mentally ill, then gender affirming care should be covered by insurance (or government health care plans, depending on where you are). That usually short circuits the “they’re mentally ill” crowd.
This is literally DSM 5
Being trans isn’t a mental illness, but gender dysphoria arising from the incongruity between gender and sex is. Stated so explicitly. It would make transphobes very mad if they could read.
DSM5 has to be taken with scepticism rather than as gospel because it’s got some very problematic stuff in there. I’ll try and get examples later from my friend who knows more
Absolutely not gospel, but it is an authoritative source in terms of clinical definition.
What problematic elements come to mind?
It is a solid diagnostic manual, however fundamentally flawed and really should be replaced with a more modern structure, with modern schools of thought.
I’ve been told that the text revision (2022) may have solved some terminology issues, but it has consistently, even now pathologised queer lifestyles and DSM has referred to them as mental disorders (such as being transgender, mentioned above, and the act of crossdressing), and has some extremely outdated views like those in the section on paraphilias. It also has origins in the American slave economy, with its precursors being created to categorise Black escapees with mental disorders and convince the public that incarceration is for their benefit.