APA Issues Official Positions Supporting Access to Care and the Rights of Transgender and Gender Variant Persons

At its July meeting, APA's Board of Trustees voted to endorse two proposed position statements in support of access to care and civil rights for transgender individuals. In doing so, APA joins other organizations, including the AMA and American Psychological Association, in endorsing strong policy statements deploring the discrimination experienced by gender-variant and transgender individuals and calling for laws to protect their civil rights.

Access to Care for Transgender and Gender Variant Individuals concerns access to medical care and its impact on the mental health of these individuals. It explains why it is crucial to remove barriers to care and to support public and private insurance coverage for gender-transition treatment.

Discrimination Against Transgender and Gender Variant Individuals concerns the pervasive discrimination transgender individuals face. It puts APA on record supporting laws that protect their civil rights and describes the mental health consequences of discrimination and lack of equal rights in areas such as health care, employment, housing, and licensing.

See also a recent report from the American Psychiatric Association Task Force on Treatment of Gender Identity Disorder published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

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Task Force Issues Report on Treatment of Gender Identity Disorder

Current literature is adequate for APA to develop consensus-based treatment recommendations for patients—including children and adolescents—with gender identity disorder (GID) and associated disorders, including disorders of sexual development. And for adults, the research base is sufficient for the development of a formal APA practice guideline, with gaps in the research database filled in by clinical consensus.

Those are the principal findings of the APA Task Force on Treatment of Gender Identity Disorder, which began its work in 2008. A report from the task force appears as a “data supplement” to the August American Journal of Psychiatry.   The task force concluded that treatment recommendations from APA are needed, even in areas where criteria are not met for developing a formal APA practice guideline. 

Read the task force report here, and watch for coverage of the task force's conclusions and recommendations in the August 17 Psychiatric News. And for past coverage of GID issues, see Psychiatric News here.

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