An examination of the controversial psychological disorder gender dysphoria
Within psychiatry, these are certainly unusual treatment approaches, as has been noted by others e. Homosexuality is to some extent associated with gender-atypical behavior. One also has to take into consideration the widespread existence of stigma and violence against transgender persons that makes legal protections desirable.
In an extensive study of female-to-male transsexualism, Devor developed a detailed process model of transsexual development, which attributes an important etiologic function to certain family dynamics in the context of a bi-gendered patriarchal society. Open in a separate window We uploaded all the articles into Endnote and each author was randomly allocated articles who then searched for the term GD.
Intimate relationships between heterosexual women and male-to-female people with GID often suffer once the GID is known or revealed.
This suggests the distress so frequently associated with GID in a Western context is not caused by the disorder itself, but by difficulties encountered from social disapproval by one's culture.
Finally, both homosexuals and people with GIVs suffer extensive societal stigma and, probably in part as a consequence, increased psychiatric problems Alanko et al. Transsexualism is, therefore, neither a subtype of GD nor a direct analogue in any diagnostic manual even though a number of articles seen in Supplementary Table S12 deem it to be the same phenomena.
There also seems to be considerable intraindividual variability in gender-related distress over time. In the often vociferous debates of the status of GIVs in the DSM in professional journals and in statements from activist groups, especially on the internet, a number of key issues have attained particular salience.
This constellation of problems appears to require breaking the Procrustean bed of the current DSM classification system.