Quote from: Asche on May 28, 2016, 08:40:44 AM
To say something is "a mental illness" (equivalently: insane, crazy, etc.) is really just a moral judgement.  They could just as well say it's "icky" or "weird," except that calling it a "mental illness" makes it seem like it's an objective fact instead of a matter of taste and that calling someone "mentally ill" is somehow kind rather than dismissive.  It's like saying something is a sin.  It's really a tool of social policing.  (If we're going to be labeling things mental illnesses, I think liking avocados should be classified as a mental illness.  I mean, guacamole???  Just eeww!!)

Mental illness is rapidly becoming a useless term due to exactly the phenomenon you describe. It's used as a pejorative, often by people who don't realize they're using it that way. On the other side you have the fact that "mental illness" started as a neutral term to describe purely psychiatric conditions and now we're finding out there's nothing purely psychiatric about any of them! Schizophrenia? Degenerative genetic brain disorder. Mood disorders? Chemical imbalances (although they often yield to non-chemical treatments, which keeps them well in the psych terrain). Autism spectrum disorders? Neurological fetal development disorder. Even personality disorders (which mostly don't yield to psychiatric methods at all--so psychs want to boot them out of the disorder handbook as untreatable personality traits) often have heritable components (and sometimes are even caused by traumatic brain injuries--psychological? hardly). You just go down the list, and it's complete anarchy, turns out what belonged to "the soul" really belongs to "the body". So even psychs don't know what to call "mental illness" any more.

And that's not even getting into argument about what's a disease state and what's normal human life processes. Basically, almost all humans are capable of getting depressed and there may be good evolutionary reasons for depression response. So what's illness and what's normal coping? Or, in society, we think people who have psychotic episodes are "ill" and "abnormal", yet most "normal" people will have a psychotic episode after being put under enough pressure, so is that "crazy" just part of the universal human experience? When is it a disease and when is it social circumstances? What has to be fought here, the crazy person with the crazy brain, or the crazy society? When 1/3 of Americans are depressed, are Americans just diseased or does our society induce depression in otherwise healthy people?

These aren't easy questions to answer.

Quote from: AnxietyDisord3r on June 03, 2016, 07:24:18 AM
When 1/3 of Americans are depressed, are Americans just diseased or does our society induce depression in otherwise healthy people?

This pretty much sums it up.

I used to think I was mentally ill. That something was wrong with my brain and how my mind worked. Since deciding to transition, I don't. Other people may be 'confused' (as some of the idiot pundits may put it) but I'm not. Confusion is now someone else's problem.

Quote from: WorkingOnThomas on June 04, 2016, 06:36:16 AM
I used to think I was mentally ill. That something was wrong with my brain and how my mind worked. Since deciding to transition, I don't. Other people may be 'confused' (as some of the idiot pundits may put it) but I'm not. Confusion is now someone else's problem.

I never thought of that consciously before; but yeah; this is how I feel. I'm much better on T (calmer; less anxious etc) and am no longer feeling 'confused'. If somebody says this is a mental illness or something that's their problem; they don't know how good I finally feel.

Quote from: Elis on June 04, 2016, 09:48:06 AM
I never thought of that consciously before; but yeah; this is how I feel. I'm much better on T (calmer; less anxious etc) and am no longer feeling 'confused'. If somebody says this is a mental illness or something that's their problem; they don't know how good I finally feel.

With me I feel like's it's less the presence of T than the knocking down of E which I feel has been gaslighting me and messing up my head since it started on me in puberty. I seriously believed that estrogen was poisoning me but also thought maybe that was a little delusional, but now I think I have hormonal depression and that's just hard cold fact.

T did change the way I respond to caffeine and certain medications, is, er, adjusting my sexuality (which is okay), and lets me build muscle which makes me feel good about myself. But I still haven't found what I think is my setpoint "normal". Maybe because I am on a low dose and I need to go up? Won't know till I see the blood titers in a couple months.

Quote from: AnxietyDisord3r on June 04, 2016, 10:26:04 AM
With me I feel like's it's less the presence of T than the knocking down of E which I feel has been gaslighting me and messing up my head since it started on me in puberty. I seriously believed that estrogen was poisoning me but also thought maybe that was a little delusional, but now I think I have hormonal depression and that's just hard cold fact.

T did change the way I respond to caffeine and certain medications, is, er, adjusting my sexuality (which is okay), and lets me build muscle which makes me feel good about myself. But I still haven't found what I think is my setpoint "normal". Maybe because I am on a low dose and I need to go up? Won't know till I see the blood titers in a couple months.

Yeah; I also think I feel good because my estrogen has finally been decreased. Pre T my dysphoria was constant; now it's a very slight buzz in the background. I haven't heard it called hormonal depression before; but that's what it felt like. It's amazing what the right hormones can do for a person and yet people still think we have a mental illness that can be cured 

I haven't noticed T changing the way I respond to caffeine and maybe sexuality has changed a bit. And yeah I still haven't found my setpoint either. I still don't feel 'normal' or 100 % comfortable within myself but it's getting there and is a vast improvement from feeling confused and unsure.

If it was a mental illness then it would not be possible to go through life functioning completely "normally" as a trans person, which I know is actually possible. Many trans people do go through life completely competently and normally and others are none the wiser about their trans status until they reveal it. So it is not a mental illness - things like depression and stress and anxiety caused by it are. In addition, nobody else can know how a trans person feels but the trans person. Nobody knows how anybody truly feels. The only definition for sane and insane is whether or not we are completely detached from reality.

Trans people seem to me to show the opposite of a detachment from reality. They are very focused on what is real, the real world around them, the behavior of others, the expectations of others - trans people are VERY focused on reality from what I see, and so they can't be insane either simply by means of being trans. Some may have other mental issues aside from trans, but being trans in itself is very much not a mental illness or demonstration of insanity. The feeling of "not being able to cope" with being trans or being different in general absolutely comes from society's expectations and its projection of those onto us. I know for a fact before I realized I was trans I did not have the weight of these things on me in the same degree. Once I realized that I did have this condition, the nature of it, that others had it too, and it "wasn't all in my head" or some invention of my own, the stress of those expectations suddenly materialized. So they are generated by our status in society, and by our comparing ourselves to others, and are not our own inventions.

Unfortunately in the area I live in, not only do most people still consider being transgender a mental illness but they also view it as a sin

But this is also a state that views suicidal ideation as a mental illness and then wonders why they consistently have one of the highest suicidal rates in the country

Quote from: Dena on May 23, 2016, 11:18:53 PM
It's hard to prove this one way or another and it was even more difficult when I transitioned because we didn't know as much about ->-bleeped-<- as we do now. One thing I can tell you is that the treatment works. I have a 33 year track record of not feeling uncomfortable with my body and I am one of many. The doctors will eliminate or treat anyone who shows signs of mental illness before starting HRT so if you have made it that far, you are transgender, you show no signs of other treatable conditions and you have a doctors stamp of approval.

My experience is very similar. Having attempted my own surgery at 5 years old, gone through "reparation" conversion therapy & now post op, I can categorically state that medically transitioning cured me of everything that remotely smacked of mental illness - anxiety, suicidal ideation, aggression etc ... Cured!!

I remember reading what one psychiatrist said was that in the DSM is that it isn't a mental illness for the following reason: no matter how many attempts have been made, all have failed to cure the dysphoria by NOT changing the Body. Therefore ours is a biological issue requiring physical not mental intervention. The cure is in changing the body to match the mind because all attempts to modify the mind to match the body have been cruel, unusual and failed to work. In every attempted case.

With kindnesses
Victoria xx

Quote from: MasterSifuVictoria on June 05, 2016, 06:10:39 AM
I remember reading what one psychiatrist said was that in the DSM is that it isn't a mental illness for the following reason: no matter how many attempts have been made, all have failed to cure the dysphoria by NOT changing the Body. Therefore ours is a biological issue requiring physical not mental intervention. The cure is in changing the body to match the mind because all attempts to modify the mind to match the body have been cruel, unusual and failed to work. In every attempted case.

A lot of stuff in the DSM actually requires medical intervention (sometimes a psychiatrist bearing chemicals is enough, sometimes not) although non-medical interventions can also help. Depression is a classic case where the evidence shows talk therapy (such as CBT) + chemotherapy is the safest, most effective option. [ETA: for a great number of patients. Some patients have depression that is unresponsive to this.] I would say that in some cases of GD a patient could benefit from science-based talk therapy techniques in order to cope with the dysphoria prior to, during, and sometimes post transition. I know that excessive ruminating makes dysphoria more unbearable for me, and based on others' comments online, that's not an uncommon problem. However, there are many otherwise well adjusted patients for whom HRT + corrective surgery alone resolves their condition. Which puts psychotherapy in an ancillary role for this condition. Psychotherapy helps cancer patients cope but you won't find cancer in the DSM.

Quote from: V M on June 05, 2016, 05:31:41 AM
Unfortunately in the area I live in, not only do most people still consider being transgender a mental illness but they also view it as a sin

But this is also a state that views suicidal ideation as a mental illness and then wonders why they consistently have one of the highest suicidal rates in the country

They are stuck somewhere in the 1950s, with all the attendant ills. I wish you luck.

Luckily there are a few progressive people who have helped me along quite a bit and I am very thankful, but most seem to be trapped in a modern version of the 1800's

Gotta wonder about a place who's most celebrated holiday is Pioneer Day

Quote from: V M on June 05, 2016, 05:31:41 AM
Unfortunately in the area I live in, not only do most people still consider being transgender a mental illness but they also view it as a sin

But this is also a state that views suicidal ideation as a mental illness and then wonders why they consistently have one of the highest suicidal rates in the country

On the subject of those people and mental illness:

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/351347

Well, dysphoria, or feeling very anxious is the psychological effect of our condition which is biological. In that sense, our dysphoria causes metal problems, an illness. Similarly, when I experience bereavement I might get mental problems. Not insanity, but problems in functioning normally which we can classify as being ill, not feeling well. Our remedy is not taking medicines to modulate our brain, but seeking therapy and surgeries where applicable. Few people are truly mentally ill in the sense of being completely out of touch with reality, and if they are, then this has a biological cause and a chemical origin.

We're still stuck with this conundrum of semantics, logical fallacies, miscellaneous buzzwords, gender politics and stigmas, which makes it difficult to get a logical picture of the issues we're trying to explain and convey.

   For what it's worth.