If anyone is less than clear why people have mentioned significant mental health comorbidities when it comes to males who demand that they be accepted as being ‘women’, this thread is a great example. Research has shown that most people seeking medicalised transition have significant underlying comorbid issues.
Occasionally this is trauma related. This seems to be very pravalent in female transitioners, particularly those transitioning as teens and that trauma can be sex abuse related, often it is divorce or a parent having chronic illness or dying or a number of these.
Often the issue is autism or ADHD, depression or a personality disorder. The interim Cass report has discussed this, as have studies and papers who have reviewed patient records at gender clinics. I am happy to post these.
Narcissism is obviously one of those. And you can see why when you understand the coercive power wielded by someone who demands people accept the impossible. In the workplace, in the home, in many aspects of that person’s life people who don’t at least give lip service to agreeing a human has changed sex can be punished and victimhood can be claimed.
An example of this is that there is currently a tiktokker who is a male person who goes into a coffee shop or a restaurant and sets up their camera and records wait staff ‘misgendering’ them. And then records that wait staff’s punishment of being lectured by the tiktokker or being reported to the manager. all the while, the tiktokker is making this incident public, viral even. Every few days or so, a new video appears. What motivates a person to do that, I wonder?
Therefore, I have a great deal of sympathy for a parent who knows that if they don’t use preferred pronouns and declare that magic has happened and their son is now their daughter, that the parent will be cut from their child’s life. There is usually some degree of rewriting history too which has significant impact on all the family. It could be revealing a undiscussed or acknowledged truth, or it could be a recreation of someone’s live to fit the desired narrative that person wishes to present to the world. Such as ‘x always was a ‘female person’, they were born in the wrong body. Again, no, this is impossible there are no ‘wrong’ bodies.
It is important to remember though that in male people, they can also be aroused thinking of themselves as female (autogynophilia), particularly if those male people have other paraphilias as well, such as that they find humiliation arousing. Some male people describe this as sissification and become avid watchers of ‘sissy porn’ which some claim hypnotise them (hypno porn). You then have a group called the transmaxxers who then believe that since women wouldn’t sleep with them, they will become the thing they hate and get sex from men instead.
Although autogynophilia has been denied by some experts, it is also clearly stated by some male trans people that this is exactly their motivation. And that anyone using their pronouns and accepting their statements of being women contributes to their arousal.
TLDR? OP’s question about whether mental health might underlie their adult child’s behaviour is certainly not uncommon.