Having been out of the loop for so many years before coming here, can someone tell me if part of the decision of the therapist as to whether we are transgenders or not is still based on the DSM test?
If so, has anyone scored high on things that were disturbing? For instance, I scored high on the psychotic and schizophrenic questions in the test. (I had the therapist give me a copy of test results and her report). She thought that they were high because of my gender dysphoria. It does make me a little nervous on occasion as there are elements of schizophrenia that I fall into. I know that people don't have to have all the symptoms, nor to some of the symptoms mean one has a disorder. I just wondered.
sam1234
Well I didn't need to do one. I suppose it might depend on what country you live in and how backwards the practitioner is.
That's the first time I've heard of the DSM being described as a test. You can find pages from it with google. Try searching for this, its one of the headings in the book
Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents and Adults 302.95 (F64.1)
The therapist is supposed to screen you for other things than transgender, but lots of them don't do their job properly either.
As far as I know, there's no specific "DSM test." When I first went to my gender clinic, they did have me take a battery of psych tests, and the testing psychologist spent about two hours going over them with me. Most of them didn't relate to gender ID -- they were nearly all personality tests. My therapist and I talked very briefly about the results and then moved on to the important stuff, like... my feelings. But that's just one clinic, albeit one that does follow the WPATH standards of care pretty closely.
The WPATH standards state, pretty much, that any mental illness should be under control before someone starts to transition, but it doesn't list any that would rule out transitioning. I think that the testing my clinic did related to two things: it was a way of streamlining the "getting to know me" part of the process, and because it's part of an academic system, some of the tests were part of whatever research various faculty members were doing.
I don't recall the WPATH SoC saying that psych testing is necessary for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
Here's the DSM: https://www.susans.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders
I've taken the PDQ (Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire), which is a DSM test for personality disorders. That's the only DSM-related test I can think of. It didn't have anything to do with my gender dysphoria. I never had to take any kind of test when I spoke to a therapist about being transgender.
I wish there was a "DSM Test" for TG. Odds are very much in my favor I'll do as well as that as any other test I've taken. But somehow I doubt failing it will change things :(