It's a bit embarrassing to remember that it was less than half a century ago that being gay was listed as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association. The organization declassified homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973, thanks in large part to the efforts of Alfred Kinsey, famed researcher of human sexuality. Kinsey argued that sexuality was a spectrum, not a binary, and managed to convince his colleagues that men attracted to other men were not victims of a disease that needed treatment. The declassification marked an acknowledgment by the psychiatric profession that many of the problems seen in gay patients—depression, anxiety, suicide attempts—were the result of societal judgment and hostility, rather than the sexual orientation itself. In essence, that it was finally OK to be gay—or at least, it was no longer listed as a mental disorder.
Today, being transgender is facing the possibility of a similar paradigm shift as the medical establishment seeks to better understand the condition. In 2013, the APA made a promising move when it released a new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the DSM-5, the manual that categorizes all mental illness. The new version renamed gender identity disorder as gender dysphoria and moved it into its own chapter. (It had previously been part of the chapter on “Sexual Dysfunctions and Paraphilic Disorders.”) Separating gender dysphoria (the medical term for the distress a person experiences when sex and gender don't match) from other disorders was lauded as an effort to reduce stigma and to acknowledge that many of the issues related to transgender identities are not psychological ramifications of the condition, but more likely the result of a society that has been slow to accept those identities.
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