WHO declassified gender dysphoria as a mental illness
Dr Helen Webberley on Triggernometry: the trans debate, with Konstantin Kisin, Triggernometry
Being transgender is a mental illness. It's listed that way, it's always been listed that way, and that classification tells you something true about what trans people are experiencing.
The World Health Organisation has been clear on this: gender dysphoria is not a mental illness. That is not my opinion, and it is not a political position. It is the formal, considered view of the body that sets the international standard for how we classify illness and disease. Being gay was once listed as a mental illness too, and we recognise now how much harm that did. The same reckoning has happened with trans identity, and the WHO has said so plainly. What trans people experience is real, and the distress is real, but the distress comes from the world around them, not from something broken inside them.
More from this conversation
