Trans is not a Mental Illness
Brynn Tannehill
On 22, Oct 2012
http://outservemag.com/2012/10/trans-is-not-a-mental-illness/Over the next few weeks I will be writing a series of blogs devoted to the questions surrounding open transgender service. This first blog addresses the issue of whether or not transgender people can be mentally stable enough to serve.
There was the equivalent of a 8.0 Earthquake in the psychiatric community this past May. Although very few people outside the transgender community noticed it, there was a casualty. Its name was Gender Identity Disorder (GID). The funeral was poorly attended, and the only people mourning it were right wing ideologues and rabidly anti-LGBT organizations who feel that LGBT people need to be as stigmatized as possible by the medical and psychological communities.
On May 4th, 2012 the American Psychiatric Association released its proposed revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). As of May 2013, these changes are expected to be finalized when the DSM goes to print, and the previous version of the DSM (v 4) will be revoked. GID had been removed, and was replaced by a different term: gender dysphoria. Besides having a different name, the new DSM-5 makes it clear there are substantive differences in how the psychiatric and psychological communities now sees gender dysphoria:
