' These stressors are distinct and separate from the stressors related to understanding one's own identity and gender orientation which, if treated properly, should be reconciled without ever attacking the core 'rightness' or 'wrongness' of one's gender orientation.
This denotes, and Bryant supports this interpretation, that therapy has not only failed gender variant individuals through its application of past DSM classification but that it has been destructive to the mental health and identity reconciliation of many gender-variant individuals. Bryant "shows how critiques have been central in shaping both the diagnosis and the evaluation and treatment practices associated with it, but that these critiques have often been incorporated in ways that jettison their most important critical components. Further by focusing on adult sexual outcomes (homosexuality), a frame initially developed by the gender researchers themselves, critics have largely missed an opportunity to rethinkl menta health support for gender-variant children in terms of general psychological health instead of narrow psycho-sexual outcomes." (Bryant, p. 24)
In many ways, this failure of mental health support would be quite similar to the slow uptake of treatment for HIV / AIDS. This is to say that the cultural disapproval of homosexuality or gender variance had allowed this public health issue to be relegated as a lower priority for the medical community. Moreover, it also promoted the notion that AIDS was a function of the broader medical condition of homosexuality. According to Conrad & Angell (2004), "some social scientists have suggested that AIDS remedicalized homosexuality. Phillip Kayal argues in his 1987 book Bearing Virtues: Gay Men's Health Crisis and the Politics of AIDS: "The present situation of Gay AIDS is akin to previous 'medicalization of homosexuality' wherein gays are defined as both biologically and psychologically sick" (p.197)....
Sociologist Steven Epstein in a 1988 article claims that, because gay men were some of the first individuals to contract AIDS, the illness was framed as a "gay disease" both among public health workers and most Americans generally. According to Epstein, being gay was perceived within popular culture as a 'symptom' of AIDS." (Conrad & Angell, p. 35)
In many ways, the treatment of gender-variance as a disorder has capitulated a similar misconception. This has been seen as part of a spectrum of psychological or genetic dissonances influences one's sexual orientation. Ultimately, therefore, the decision with the release of the DSM-V to remove the 'disorder' label from this discussion should have a decidedly positive impact on the therapeutic discourse regarding gender variance.
Most specifically, the hope is that this transition should open a much wider door for treatment of identity 'dysphoria.' Here, the focus of treatment is on removing the obstacles to recognizing, accepting and living with one's identity. By removing the stigma from the condition, we give therapists and mental health professionals a substantially better starting point for helping bring psychological equanimity to those who might otherwise struggle to find it. This transition in characterization is especially important because it takes a step toward stemming the combined cultural disenfranchisement and therapeutic misunderstanding that have intensified rather than mollified gender confusion for generations of patients.
Works Cited:
Bryant, K. (2006). Making Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood: Historical Lessons for Contemporary Debates. Sexuality Research & Social Policy, 3(3).
Conrad, P. & Angell, a. (2004). Homosexuality and Remdicalization. Society, July/August 2004.
Grush, L. (2013). The DSM-5 is Here: What the controversial new changes mean for mental health care. Advocate.
