Is transsexuality a mental disorder?

I'm not even going to pretend I'm oh-so-wise about this. I feel like transphobia is something that's killing so many people out there who are told that they're not normal and should be treated as they're mentally ill. I have never had anything against transsexuality, and I doubt this will change. I'm going to show you an an example of one out of many suicides from transexual/transgender teenagers. (You might say it happened because of her 'mental illness', but I believe it was the hate and intolerance towards who she was)

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Food for thought:
"An additional, handwritten suicide note reading "I've had enough" was found on her bed, but then thrown away by Alcorn's mother after police made a copy.^[16]In the early morning of December 28, police informed news sources that she had been walking southbound on Interstate 71 near Union Township when she was struck by a semi-trailer just before 2:30 am near the South Lebanon exit.^[21] She died at the scene. It is believed that Alcorn walked three to four miles from her parents' house in nearby Kings Mills, Ohio, before being struck. According to her suicide note, Alcorn had felt "like a girl trapped in a boy's body" since she was four, and came to identify as a transgender girl from the age of fourteen, when she became aware of the term.Carla Alcorn (mother) responded to criticism in an interview with CNN, stating "we loved him unconditionally. We loved him no matter what. I loved my son. People need to know that I loved him. He was a good kid, a good boy."" Leelah Alcorn 1997-2014,

You're a professional psychologist?? Good lord what's upon us.. .

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Ugh. Please dont its not an insult match its supposed be an intellectual discussion. Go back to tumblr.

Racist, ageist, anything else? Also I'm still in study whilst practicing


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You can't be racist to a white person? Um

That sums you up all over "you can't be racist to a white person"

The other poster was right sod off to tumblr


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Thats reverse racism, if you believe you can be racist to a white person you're dumb asf

Oh so because a quick google tells you that you think you're right do you?

First of all. No one cares about the Merriam Webster Medical definition. It's the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that's is the bible for mental health professionals and academics.

As you may find if you do a bit more googling, that the definition of a mental health disorder is very complex. I find it interesting how you don't seem to think suffering is a requirement of a disorder? But anyway, here'a the DSM-5 definition.

"A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other important activities. An expectable or culturally approved response to a common stressor or loss, such as the death of a loved one, is not a mental disorder. Socially deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) and conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are not mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual, as described above."



Incidentally, I don't think it's important to put too much sway on the umbrella definition. Because of the great variety of disorders, what matters to clinicians is the individual definitions.

A deviation from "the norm" does not equate to disorder.

"Usually" associated with significant distress.

Identifying that it is not a pre-requisite.

As someone who does suffer from a Mental Health Disorder and is in regular contact with others I am aware that not everyone "suffers" from it.

When something deviated from a set or regular state i.e something that is "Ordered".

It is considered "Dis-Ordered".

I think it's very similar to those kinds of mental disorders people get where they feel like a certain body part isn't 'theirs' and they want it amputated. I can't remember what that's called but I remember learning a lot of cases about it on my degree.

I think it must be a very horrible experience to feel that you are in the wrong body and I really do sympathise with anyone going through that, but I think it's kind of common sense that if you are born with the body of a 'girl' or 'boy' and your brain feels you are the opposite then it's probably more likely that your brain is wrong rather than your body.

Exactly. If I felt as though my hand wasn't my own and this was causing me serious distress, the problem clearly isn't my perfectly healthy hand.

And the whole thing about 'gender dysphoria' being the mental disorder and not you believing you're in the wrong freakin' body is a little strange. "Oh, my brain thinking I'm a man when I'm really a woman isn't the mental disorder; it's the distress that I get from it that's the mental disorder.'" Err, what? Feeling distressed isn't the disorder; the abnormal mental disassociation causing the distress should be the disorder, for crying out loud.

Yeah I think it is.
I don't understand how you can be comfortable with people who willingly mutilate their sexual organs via surgery because they believe "nature got it wrong". It's a form of self harm that's celebrated with euphemistic terms like "transitioning".

If you're born male (with male sexual organs), you're male. If you're born female (with female sexual organs), you're a female. The idea that you were born the "wrong way" is purely a product of the mind.
What's even more ridiculous is the way people think having sex reassignment surgery/therapy, popping a few hormone pills and making some aesthetic changes is enough to put them on par with a naturally born person of the same biological sex.

It's an incredibly reductive way of looking at biological sex. And it's all articfical. A man who "becomes" a woman is still a man underneath no matter how people may attempt to dismiss it. He has never gone thru female puberty or will have monthly periods or experience childbirth - because he is not a female, but a male who has made artifical changes in order to masquerade as a woman. Internally he will always be male.

We congratulate people who prosper despite being born with life-limiting disabilities. We admire the way in which they come to accept and overcome the limiting features they are born with.
And yet when people are born into (usually) healthy bodies and then go on to believe that they were born "wrong", we're told that it is acceptable for such people to intentionally mutilate themselves (i.e. **** up healthy organs) via surgery because they believe it's the right thing to do.
This response to the failure of accepting what they are is then applauded.

I find the artificiality of it all disturbing. What happened to embracing what nature has graciously given you instead of pretending to be something you're not?

If they believe they were born in the wrong body, why should they not be allowed to change? I mean you are practically saying that they should stay to their nature. Also not all of them have SRS or even take hormone therapy they just dress as the opposite gender, is that bad? I mean if you were born with a penis that doesn't mean you can't wear skirts and dresses. Its society that enforces these stereotypes and they of course aren't able to dress as the opposite gender without being stigmatized. but can I get your argument clear? Are you against people acting as the opposite gender or them going through hormone therapy and SRS

If it's the same as me he is against the surgery and hormones and thinks that the people should receive mental health care instead.


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Well the NHS help children with gender dysphoria and let them undertake hormone therapy and SRS for free when they have been diagnosed by a psychiatrist so you can't be against the system we live in and Im guessing you work for the NHS so why are you against the treatment?

That is too literal, that may make sense linguistically but not scientifically.

The DSM has explicitly stated in their current or previous publication that a deviation from normal standards of society is not sufficient to constitute a disorder.