World Health Organization no longer classifies being transgender as mental illness

The World Health Organization (WHO) no longer will classify being transgender as a mental illness. 

The organization announced earlier this week that gender incongruence will now be classified as a sexual health condition going forward in its new edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). 

According to the newly updated diagnostic tool, gender incongruence is now “characterized by a marked and persistent incongruence between an individual’s experienced gender and the assigned sex.”

{mosads}”It was taken out of mental health disorders because we had better understanding that this wasn’t actually a mental health condition and leaving it there was causing stigma,” the WHO’s Department of Reproductive Health and Research, Dr. Lale Say, said in video discussing the revision released on Monday. 

“So in order to reduce the stigma while also ensuring access to necessary health interventions, this was placed to a different chapter,” Say continued. 

Transgender Europe praised the organization’s removal of trans identities from the it’s tool’s mental health disorders chapter. 

“This is the result of tremendous effort by trans and gender diverse activists from around the world to insist on our humanity, and I am elated that the WHO agrees that gender identity is not a mental illness,” executive director Julia Ehrt said of the change in a press release.