Jenna Talackova petition scolds WHO for listing trans people as mentally ill
Posted: October 12, 2012 Updated: October 12, 2012 | 5:32 pm
By Kate Webb
Metro Vancouverhttp://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/402025/jenna-talackova-petition-scolds-who-for-listing-trans-people-as-mentally-ill/
PHOTO:The Canadian Press/Aaron Vincent ElkaimTransgender beauty queen Jenna Talackova rose to fame by challenging billionaire Donald Trump for the right to compete in the Miss Universe Canada pageant, and won. Now, she's ready to take on the World Health Organization.
The Vancouver-raised model, who was born a boy but identified as female from an early age and underwent sex reassignment surgery at 19, has launched an online petition demanding the WHO remove gender identity disorder (GID) from its list of mental illnesses.
So far she has collected more than 27,000 signatures.
"I'm not sick at all," she says in an email urging supporters to sign the petition at
change.org. "This is ridiculous, especially coming from a UN agency, and only increases the stigma and discrimination trans people face every day."
The WHO could not be reached for comment, but Dr. Lori Brotto, a UBC psychologist who specializes in sexual health, explains the UN body's International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is a diagnostic manual used by doctors around the world. The American Psychological Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which Brotto is helping to rewrite, is more widely used in Canada and also lists GID as a mental disease.
If the classification is changed, trans people could lose access to things like psychiatric care and sex reassignment surgery that are now provided through insurance or public healthcare, Brotto says. "What would be ideal is somewhere within each of those manuals, if there was a section for physiological or medical disorders that have maybe psychiatric parts to them," she said.
