Does Mental Health need to be higher on the agenda?

[akkakk]

@MissScarletInTheBallroom posted a great post on another thread where (and I trust it is okay to quote), she said:

Secondly, you say it's not a mental illness. Why do you think this? It's not a physical illness. Prior to receiving any kind of "treatment", trans people's bodies are perfectly ordinary and as healthy as anyone else's. Their dysphoria (if they have dysphoria) is a feeling in their head. A feeling which apparently makes them so miserable that they want to change everything about who they are, even to the point of having irreversible medical interventions which harm their physical health but may allow them to superficially resemble a member of the opposite sex. How is that not a mental illness?

I think it very much is a mental illness, and I cannot think of any other example of where we harm the physical body to try to make it "match" what is going on in the person's brain, rather than attempting to actually treat the mental illness.

Brilliantly put... the simple reality with the trans discussion is that so much of the cause / reasons / solution lies in the mental health area - but as a society we stigmatise the phrasing 'Mental Illness' to the point that even though it would be helpful to the individual, we find any alternative to avoid that categorisation...

In many ways, the actions taking place in the trans world (self-mutilation / coercive behaviour against women / denial of truth and biology) are all mental health or mental illness related...

If we were able to re-frame mental illness so that it was seen as being valuable to treat it - would that not of itself go a long way to ironing out the issues / self-deceptions / lies etc. that we are seeing...

For those with Body Dysmorphia - treat the mental illness - for those with Autogynephilia - again, there is a mental illness to deal with...

Society's current framing of mental illness as being degrading / and stigmatised is unhelpful to all - if we could find ways to reposition it so that it was seen as acceptable to have a mental health issue - and to deal with it, then we might help a number of other issues along the way.

Their argument would be “being gay used to be seen as a mental illness.” In other words, they do not believe they are mentally ill, just finding their true selves.

Loads of trans people (myself included) have mental health comorbidities and are treated for them. There's no stigma around mental health in the trans community.

Also, the doctors don't know how to treat body dysphoria. I've never heard of anyone managing to cure body dysphoria with talk or medicine therapy. I don't know about AGP, but I suspect it's the same.

I think Mental health has already been expanded further than is helpful.

I think life is tricky and we all have to learn to live with difficult feelings and go through difficult experiences. This is how we grow and develop emotional coping skills.

I would not count 'feeling uncomfortable in your body' as a mental illness. I think it is a normal part of growing up that you learn to cope with.

I think the thing that needs to change in society is gender stereotyping. That is what is causing this issue. That and good old homophobia.

@Ohfuckrucksack

"I think the thing that needs to change in society is gender stereotyping. That is what is causing this issue. That and good old homophobia."

Not always. Not in my case, for example.

TBH, I don't think doctors know how to cure most mental illnesses, and even when they do, the resources are not available to actually do it.

I have a doctor friend who retrained about 20 years ago as a psychiatrist, and I recall her complaining not long after she qualified about the decisions being made on mental health funding - the money was all essentially going into short term CBT, with almost nothing given to support serious/complex cases. If you needed help for more than 6 weeks, there wouldn't be much and the waiting lists would be long.

Fast forward to now and she was absolutely right, I have a DD with serious mental health problems and in 5 years the amount of useful support we've had from the NHS has been minimal. Most other parents I know say the same. And if your child has autism co-morbid with their mental health issues (which of course we know many young transitioned do), well, forget it. 😡

For those young trans people at least, decent mental health support would be life changing, but I can't see much chance of it being provided in the NHS as it currently stands and Labour do not sound like they're going to do much to improve that unfortunately.

Gender Dysphoria was listed in the DSM 4 as a mental illness under Gender Identity Disorder - however transactivists got it re-classified in DSM -5 as something 'causing distress that requires medical intervention' rather than a mental illness- removing the mental health element - I think that the DSM has been corrupted by big pharma money.

Body integrity identity disorder (BIID) is a mental health condition that is similar - where someone feels that a limb or healthy body part isn't part of your body, and while treating it doctors do not cut off healthy limbs. To go along with a mental health problem and treat it as a physical problem is so recklace and foolhardy.

Kelly J Keen does a good summery of Domenico Di Ceglie the psychiatrist who first started treating patients as literally the opposit sex in 'treatment' for gender dysphoria - he only had 4 patients in his whole career as it was very rare at the time - the woman he based his treatment on had a lot of problems -her mother was in an abusive relationship and there were other issues.
One of 4 of his patients desisted but his airy-fairy, romantic concept of 'genered souls' solution was to setup GIDS, and 'go along' with the delusion.

I think that we need to re-set psychiatry to a more grounded sex based reality, they've badly let down their patients.

100%.

IMHO we have to accept that prison onset gender dysphoria, and other dishonest predators claiming to be trans, is real. They deserve a combination of punishment and mental health support.

Then you have the autogynephiles and transvestic fetishists (two separate things I believe - see Dr Az Haseem, sic(?)). IMHO these people need to keep their paraphilias in the privacy of their own homes, and if they can;t they need punishment or mental health support. I do not consent to playing a part in a stranger's paraphilia, ever.

Then you have those who trauma, gender dysphoria/morphia, neuro-diversity, mental illness, etc etc causes them to become trans. These people clearly need MH support.

I also genuinely believe that if MH support was of a good quality and easily available when MH problems first revealed themselves there would be MANY MANY fewer people coming out as trans in the first place.

For a long time we were not allowed to say it is a mental health issue on here, I was deleted for it under a previous user name. It’s all part of the no debate and you really can’t discuss it clearly without bringing mental health into it.

I have given a very different answer to you, which I stand by.

But I do also agree that part of MH support should be "stop f-ing wallowing, "man"-up - only you can decide what life you want and only you can make it happen."

Completely agree. I'm very worried about the emphasis on MH now in schools, including very questionable external companies going into schools and making huge amounts of money to 'treat' a problem that they have a vested interest in maintaining.

I don't think it's at all a coincidence that these companies also preach gender woo.

The obvious difference here is that "treatment" for homosexuality is now considered to be a human rights abuse, whereas when it comes to gender dysphoria it is trans people themselves who are demanding "treatment" and claiming that lack of access to it is an abuse of their human rights.

If there was a medication which cured or alleviated the symptoms of dysphoria and allowed trans people to live comfortably as the sex they are, would you want to take it?

@Seethlaw Is your dysmorphia rooted in trauma?

@JamieCannister I really like Az Hakeem's work and am very on board on treating the different groups that identify as 'trans' in different ways - you identify several of these groups.

Only some of these groups require mental health support - those dealing with trauma for instance.

Neurodiverse individuals are looking for belonging and acceptance, and whilst they have a higher level of mental health support needs, I don't think it's automatic. I think their current identifying as queer or trans has been to try and find acceptance in school and university groups. I think when this has become less popular, they will not adopt it in the same numbers.

YOU BET!!! I'd be all over it. I'd even take a brain surgery or something, no problem.

I don't want to be trans; I just am, and I'm trying to limit the discomfort of it, that's all.

I have no idea. I know it's nothing to do with not wanting to have a female body or anything of the sort. And I already had it at age 6. But my mother was heavily emotionally abusive, so who knows what she might have done when I was a baby or a tiny kid?

@Seethlaw I hope you've been able to explore all the feelings around the emotional abuse of your mother with an exploratory therapist.

What do you remember from being 6 that made you trans in your eyes?

I am no expert on neuro-diversity, but I will say that anyone who does not feel happy and accepted probably needs some mental health support to help them accept that they are different and their experiences might be different (and worse) than the experiences others have. They probably also need something (MH support or something else) to assist them in navigating a world which is neuro-typical.

Oh yeah, I had years of therapy to untangle all of that.

When I was 6, i had short hair and was sometimes mistaken for a boy. When that happened, I felt a sense of elation, of rightness, of being seen for what I truly was. And when people were corrected, I wailed inside, "Noooo, why are you telling them I'm a girl when they had it right?? I'm a boy!"

@Seethlaw I can relate to that all the way to adulthood, but for me it was more to do with growing up in a household/society where it sucked to be female and I felt more powerful /safer in trousers than a dress.

I know it's different for you, but I put that down to negative gender stereotyping - the expectations on me as a girl/woman and the increased danger that I faced.

It took until I had children before I fully embraced being a woman, because that was what made me really appreciate my body for what it could do and be.

In terms of gender expectations, I'm still very manly!

I think there i some real truth in that and in particular around the need for belonging and acceptance but the solution to those needs sits in societal change / in mental health / in contexts that build people up rather than tearing them down... Sadly we have instead ended up assuming that there are quick answers and this often seems to be feed some hormones / chop a bit of the body off - and while that may give acceptance into one part of society, it doesn't deal with the original issues and it doesn't give acceptance at a wider level...

I think that I feel quite strongly that many of these discussions could be re-phrased as how has society yet again failed someone / a set of people - and I know that for some mental health has become the answer / reason to everything (and undoubtedly that is abused), but equally we haven't been building a society predicated on expecting / supporting / allowing for a framework which encourages good mental health - there is definitely a lot that needs to be done...

@Ohfuckrucksack

For me, it's not to do with feelings of safety. Possibly, it might have to do with feelings of responsibility. Like, there was no man at home (neither my father nor that of my half-sister stayed around), so I felt like I had to be the man of the house. So maybe that's where it came from? Or maybe my mother had assumed I'd be a boy throughout her pregnancy, and I picked up on that? I don't know. I only know the consequences.

I had a child, but it didn't change anything.

@Seethlaw That's an interesting perspective.. Thank you for discussing it.

One of the things in Hannah Barnes book about the Tavi was how there really wasn't any support network and help in terms of mental health and talking things through which wasn't predetermined in the outcome being transition. They would medicalise within 4 sessions. Therein lies a huge problem.

Mental health support is expensive. It might need to be life long. And the 'solution' we come up with is generally a block of 6 - 12 sessions if you are lucky.

The reality is a lot of it comes down to a loss of community and just generalised social networks which have been massively disrupted and destroyed by various factors over the last 50 years.

We also aren't making the connection between anoerxia and gender dysphoria and the rise in the use of filters and photoshopping as younger generations have become more image obsessed. Before this affected girls but there has been a massive uptick in boys with steroid abuse and the gym bunny look.

So I'm inclined to say we aren't looking at this as an issue of society and mental health (without pathologicalising it) in terms of support network building and technology change. And we arent looking at the problems of overmedicalisation as somehow being the solution to the issues we are seeing.

We need for normalisation in terms of whats normal to 'need' in terms of support and sources of that to come from none health institutionalisation. We need to look at local community building in various ways. And the binning of the vanity culture.