Geneva, Switzerland, Jun 21, 2018 / 12:47 pm
On Monday, the World Health Organization reported it would no longer designate transgenderism as a mental health disorder in its updated classification of diseases.
"It was taken out from mental health disorders because we had [a] better understanding that this was not actually a mental health condition, and leaving it there was causing stigma," said Dr. Lale Say, coordinator of WHO's adolescents and at-risk populations team, according to the Huffington Post.
The WHO will now classify transgender identities as "gender incongruence," in its updated section on sexual health conditions in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. This definition, according to psychologist Dr. Geoffrey Reed, is expresses "a discrepancy between a person's experienced gender identity and their body."
The American Psychiatric Association made a similar shift in 2012 when it revised its manual of mental disorders to remove transgenderism as a mental disorder. Instead, the association classified individuals who experience emotional stress related to gender identity as a person with "gender dysphoria."