On its website, CBS News (5/28, Lewis) reports the World Health Organization (WHO) announced it will remove “gender identity disorder” from the revised version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), “its global manual of diagnoses.” The change, announced last summer, includes “a resolution to amend the health guidelines” officially approved on Saturday and reclassifies “gender identity disorder” as “gender incongruence.” That classification “is now featured under the sexual health chapter rather than the mental disorders chapter.” The piece adds that “both the ICD and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) are used to diagnose patients,” and the American Psychiatric Association “last revised the DSM in 2012 to remove the term ‘gender identity disorder’ from the manual and add the term ‘gender dysphoria.’”
The New York Daily News (5/28, Assunção) reports the changes received approval Saturday at the World Health Assembly. Graeme Reid, LGBT rights director at Human Rights Watch, said, “The WHO’s removal of ‘gender identity disorder’ from its diagnostic manual will have a liberating effect on transgender people worldwide,” adding, “Governments should swiftly reform national medical systems and laws that require this now officially outdated diagnosis.” Dr. Jack Drescher, a member of the ICD-11 working group, wrote, “there is substantial evidence that the stigma associated with the intersection of transgender status and mental disorders contributes to precarious legal status [and] human rights violations.”
TIME (5/28, Haynes) and the Washington Examiner (5/28, Correll) also report.
Related Links:
— “World Health Organization removes “gender identity disorder” from list of mental illnesses, “Sophie Lewis, CBS News, May 28, 2019