Interesting. I’d need more examples to really be able to put myself in your shoes though.
What makes you think it’s not a psychological disorder? Or do you think that even if it is, the appropriate treatment is to undergo gender reassignment surgery or HRT, or alternatively, that it’s harmless enough that it’s pointless to label it as such?
OK, so, to the best of my knowledge, those who work in Psychology and Psychiatry believe that being trans in and of itself is not a disorder, but the distress that derives from it can be treated as if it were one. Indeed, the DSM-5 stresses that Gender Dysphoria is about the distress, not the fact that they identify as another gender identity. The International Classifications of Disease 11th edition, (the draft of which was released in June) will shift what it calls gender incongruence out of the mental health section, and into the section on Sexual health matters.
Thanks for the reply. It seems to me to be pretty arbitrary sometimes what is classified as a disorder and what isn’t–I recall the National Geographic article on transgenderism saying that an unusual amount of estrogen in a guy or testosterone in a woman was one cause of gender dysphoria, and other comparable biological phenomena could play a role as well. I googled the definition of “psychological disorder”, and it’s officially:
“A syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning.”
My understanding was slightly different, but the definition still seems to apply to gender dysphoria. Clearly, the level of “disturbance” is much lower, but based on your anecdote about your friend having “vivid dreams of being a mother and [waking] up crying because that can’t happen” sounds like a disturbance in behaviour. The suicide rates of transgender people (regardless of whether they’ve transitioned) is abnormally high, which is strange if it isn’t in fact a disorder, unless the suicides are due to social rejection.
What think you?