Hi, and welcome to another episode of the trans 101 series.
Today we are going to be talking about Gender Dysphoria diagnosis.
In the previous video I talked about the diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria in children
Today I'm going to be talking about the gender diag-the gender diagnose - the gender dysphoria diagnosis for adults and late teens
So there are some differences, which is why there are two videos on this topic,
between the diagnosis for children and the diagnosis for teens / adults.
The main difference is that for adults you need two out of the six criteria
and the criteria are just a little bit different than the children one
So I'm going to explain to you in detail what they are
a marked incongruence between one's assigned gender and expressed gender
a strong desire to rid one's primary and/or secondary sex characteristics
a strong desire for the primary or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender
A desire to be the other gender
A desire to be treated as the other gender
a strong conviction that the individual has typical feelings and reactions of the other gender
so gender dysphoria is associated with clinically significant impairment or distress
in areas of functioning like school or social things.
There are some people in the trans community and people who identify as trans
that do not like that this is seen as a medical condition.
Now, I'm going to explain to you why I believe that it is okay
that it is seen as a medical condition, all right?
And it's really easy: access to services.
Without it being a diagnosed medical condition, um, we wouldn't be able to have access to the
things that we have access to right now: uh, hormones and therapy and surgery
Especially in Canada where things are covered,
I'm able to get surgery and I'm able to get testosterone
as long as I have a letter from a therapist and as long as it's prescribed by a doctor.
So I have access to these services because it is a medical condition.
So this is also very important, especially if people live in the United States, because of insurance.
There are a lot of insurance plans that don't just take your word for it that you're trans
actually, I think all of them don't take your word for it,
and you absolutely need to have a letter from a doctor, um,
Saying that hey I'm trans and I want to have surgery so you need to cover it
and I mean it's not like that obviously, but,
Having access to these services with insurance requires you to have a diagnosis of Gender dysphoria
It's not a bad thing to have a diagnosis for Gender Dysphoria, honestly.
It's just the issue that we mainly have with this diagnosis is the gatekeeping.
and some people are not able to access these services because they're not able to get a diagnosis
Some doctors refuse to give a diagnosis while others have no idea what this is so they don't do it.
More on gatekeeping later on in this series, but basically that's- that's the main issue.
So, usually when someone gets diagnosed with something there's always the type of treatment plan that's associated with it.
Well, the treatment of gender dysphoria is transitioning.
Now people choose to transition a different way, right, so dysphoria means distress right it means a level of distress
so when you talk about Gender Dysphoria your...not your gender is distress,
but there is there is some sort of thing that's not clicking in your head.
Basically it's that your body does not match how you see yourself or how you are inside
and transitioning, for a lot of people, taking hormones, um, and uh, going through surgeries,
and changing your name legally and all of these things help alleviate that distress, so that's basically it.
So transitioning is the treatment plan for a lot of trans people in order to alleviate dysphoria and in order to be able to...
I don't know, live your life without feeling like there's something missing or something that is not connecting
So as a personal example, in order for me to alleviate dysphoria, I needed to transition.
I needed to go on hormones, and I needed to have top surgery
This is what I needed to do in order to make my body comfortable.
Not everybody who transitions decides to go on hormones and decides to have surgery later on.
Everybody has a different way of transitioning, in order to alleviate their own dysphoria.
so I can't tell you 100% that there is a cookie-cutter way to alleviate dysphoria. That doesn't exist.
but most people do go through hormone replacement therapy and go through surgeries
in order to feel more comfortable and more aligned with how they see themselves.
So as I stated before some people really don't like that it's seen that the medical condition.
They would much rather say that they're trans and have people believe them that they're trans
instead of having to go to a doctor, getting a letter and stuff like that.
So I can understand that part as well. I like that it's seen as the medical condition only because
we have access to the services that we need in order to transition and in order to alleviate dysphoria.
Anyways, if you want more info on the diagnosis for trans kids, that's the last video that I just made
and make sure to check back every day for a new video
and the videos on this series are going to be great trans 101 things that you can watch and that you can give to people.
Anyways, thank you so much for joining me and have a great day. Bye.