My Word: Treating transgender children as mentally ill creates the problem
Inside Bay Area
By Rafael Pineda and Maria Jos Mu oz
Posted: 12/17/2009 01:16:48 PM PST
Updated: 12/17/2009 01:16:48 PM PST


http://www.insidebayarea.com/timesstar/localnews/ci_14019057


As parents of a beautiful, happy and healthy transgender child attending school in Alameda, our hearts are broken by the thousands of gender-nonconforming children who face violence, verbal and sexual harassment, increased dropout rates and institutional bias — and who take their own lives at three times the rate of their peers — largely because they have been diagnosed as mentally ill and treated accordingly.

"treated accordingly"...

Violence, verbal and sexual harassment is how one treats the mentally ill?

uhm...

I'm not sure that the abuse transgender children receive from their classmates has to do with being labeled "mentally ill" so much as for transgressing the gender binary.  But surely the label doesn't help, and as parents of a transgender child, they would know what insults have tossed around.

Children can be very mean to someone who is seen as different.