By Jaime Grant, Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has released its commentary on the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) proposed revision of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-V (DSM). In doing so, we extend a 37-year tradition of serving as a watchdog for the APA’s diagnostic categories pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity, affirming its move to replace "gender identity disorder" with "gender incongruence" in this version of the DSM.
The APA, and the medical profession as a whole, still has a long way to go in serving transgender and gender nonconforming people’s basic needs. Gender variance is not a psychiatric problem, it is a natural human variation that in some cases, requires culturally competent medical attention and support. That transgender people still have to move mountains to obtain such care is a shame on both the APA and the American Medical Association, which must more aggressively train medical personnel to appropriately address the needs of patients with nonconforming gender expressions.
The Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality recently undertook the largest national study of transgender discrimination in U.S. history. One third of our 6,500 respondents report that they are postponing needed medical care due to discrimination and insensitivity on the part of health providers, while fully half of the sample reports having to teach their doctors about transgender people’s needs in order to receive competent care.
That gender nonconformity has languished in the "mental disorder" aisle for so long has not helped medical professionals in taking up their responsibility to develop specific, affirming medical standards of care of transgender health consumers. Today, the Task Force is heartened by the move from "gender identity disorder" to "gender incongruence," but pushes both the psychiatric and medical professions to reframe its service of transgender people so that "gender incongruence" is removed entirely from the DSM-VI, and appropriate programs are developed within medical training and health care systems as a whole to ensure access to fully trained, culturally competent medical care.
For the full commentary, go here.