Another thread i was in tangented into this and got kinda ugly.
I think the DSM needs some categories of normal variation maybe? Remove the stigma from being in the DSM and provide some useful notes on subcategories of the population that do not have a mental illness AS SUCH but who have personality or behaviour traits which might affect their treatment for other problems, or who's other conditions may cause mental distress. (Actually, if anyone can find a copy of the DSM see if there are entries for destress caused by other medical conditions?)
There is definatey something to gain by having a clear definition of your difficulties somewhere which is readily recognised: access to treatment free of charge in areas with a good public health system, protection from being told to "just get over it", protection form discrimination, you could get your treatment time off as sick leave from work rather than your holiday time etc.
Also i don't think you shold panick about whether your disorder is mental. There is a problem of stigma asociated with mental illness and eccentricity, but just vehamently claiming that your dificulties are not a mental illness doesn't really solve that. It's kind of an every-minority-for-themselves approach in which nobody wins.
There have been a lot of comparisons made to homosexuality which i don't think are valid. Homosexuals do not seek any medical intervention, and there is no evidence that they benifit from medical or psychological intervention. The issue with removing homosexuality from the DSM was about whether or not it was an illness at all, not about whether it was a mental illness.
Many, and possibly most, transexuals identify their dificulties as a medical condition, and seek medical treatment (surgery, hormones, etc.). So if you are happy to have it identified as a medical condition, then it is logical for it to be mentioned in comprehensive texts of conditions affecting all the systems it seffects. A comprehensive text book of genital surgery would describe SRS; a comprehensive text book of mental conditions (the DSM) should describe the mental destress caused by GID.
Post Merge: August 28, 2009, 01:26:40 PM
Can someone find a copy of the actual enrty in the DSM, i think i have access to it through my uni's library but i have forgotten how to get to it. I have had a bit of a dificult time mental-health wise recently (hence my passionate objection to you prepetuationg the stigma of mental illness), my issue was in the DSM, but in every enrty i have read there is a note to the effect of "to a degree that causes the individual severe distress or loss of function" (not those words, but something like that), and if it doesn't pass that threashold it's an eccentricity or normal variation not a "mental disoorder". So this part of the article seems likely to be missleading:
QuoteOn top of that, keeping "GID" in the DSM marks all transgender people as mentally disordered, no matter how well they are functioning, no matter how sensible they are about dealing with the challenges of being transgender.
Also if i was making the descision on how to define it, i would include a note to the effect that some transgenderred individuals (e.g. crossdressers) can function perfecly normally without any medical intervention. If someone can find the actual entry, i suspect it probably does say something like that?
Post Merge: August 28, 2009, 02:38:28 PM
I like their idea of including it as something that can cause distress but is not actually a disorder as such.
QuoteRemove "GID" from the DSM as a "mental disorder." But add in the DSM transgender feelings as a known possible cause of depression, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, and so forth. (After all, sometimes being transgender – like being a gay youth or a grieving widower – can lead to depression, anxiety, and so forth.) And in those cases, where evidence supports it, allow the treatment for those particular forms of depression and anxiety to include hormone treatments and surgeries, if the patient so wishes to follow those paths. After all, we have lots of research that such treatments, almost without exception, result in positive outcomes.
Man, i think there should be something like this for asperger's syndrome... may cause stress if forced to interract with normal people
Actually the more i read and think the more i get keen on my idea of the DSM including normal variation which may be relevant to disstress. Pathological or not, transexualismis unusual. It involves a way of thinking and an inner experience which is not typical of the rest of us/them.
thanks for the link, that was a really good article.
