How Gender Dysphoria Affects Mental Health

Being transgender is not in itself a mental health condition. However, the experience of being transgender can cause many mental health complications, especially when gender dysphoria is untreated. In this blog I want to address some of the common misconceptions of gender dysphoria and mental health.

What Does it Mean to be Transgender?

When you identify as transgender, you experience your gender as different to the gender you were assigned at birth. I, for example, was assigned female at birth, and I came to realize that I am in fact male.

Knowing your gender is not that which was assigned, can be hugely distressing. The name for the distress caused by feeling at odds with your assigned gender is gender dysphoria.

It is important to note that not all transgender people experience gender dysphoria. As trans people, we experience and discover our gender identity in a variety of ways. Having gender dysphoria is not a requirement for being transgender or for going through gender transition.

Gender Dysphoria and Mental Health

For those people who do experience gender dysphoria, as I did, life can feel incredibly challenging. The sense of ill-ease and discomfort that arises can cause many mental health symptoms, such as depression and anxiety. It is for this reason, that gender dysphoria is often mistaken for mental illness.

Although it is very common for trans people to have mental health challenges, gender dysphoria is not itself a mental health diagnosis. Rather it is untreated gender dysphoria which then causes mental health problems.

A Brief History of Gender Dysphoria

There was a time when being transgender was classified as a mental health diagnosis. Up until 2012, transgender people were diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder (GID).

However, in 2012 it was recognized that being transgender was neither a mental or behavioral disorder. It was also acknowledged that classing it as such was stigmatizing trans people as disordered. Therefore, the GID diagnosis was scrapped and removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).

Gender Dysphoria became the new term to describe the experience and distress of gender incongruence. Importantly, gender dysphoria is listed under sexual health and not as a mental health condition.

Untreated Gender Dysphoria and Mental Health

The cross over between gender dysphoria and mental health occurs when gender dysphoria goes undiagnosed. For example, I have had chronic mental health issues since my early teens, which began with anxiety and depression. In a misguided attempt to cope with the distress I felt, I turned to drugs and alcohol. Abusing alcohol and drugs did of course eventually just serve to make my mental health issues so much worse.

My mental health issues have been given various labels over the years, such as generalized anxiety disorder and borderline personality disorder. Although these diagnoses explained some of what was going on, it never got to the root or the solution of my distress.

Gender Dysphoria as A Cause Of Poor Mental Health

When I realized I was transgender, at the age of thirty-seven, suddenly a lot of my mental health conditions made sense. I could see that what I had been experiencing was gender dysphoria. As my gender dysphoria had gone untreated, my mental health issues had continued to worsen, as had my methods to cope.

In finally knowing the root of the distress I had felt all my life, I had a solution to end the distress. That solution was to go through gender transition.

Gender Transition as a Treatment for Gender Dysphoria

It is now well recognised that for many transgender people, deciding to go through gender transition is a valid way to overcome gender dysphoria. There are many ways to transition. Some transgender people naturally transition, changing their appearance and pronouns. Other trans people, like me, medically transition.

Medical transition involves cross-sex hormones and surgery. For trans men, there are options for chest surgery, to create a male chest, and lower surgery, to create a penis. Not all trans people opt for surgery, some might just choose top surgery.

Each trans person has a unique path to work out what it is that they need to feel comfortable in their skin and affirm their gender.

My transition pathway has included testosterone, top surgery and phalloplasty. I needed all of these interventions, in order to affirm my maleness.

Having reached the end of my medical transition in 2018, I am now largely free of gender dysphoria. Every now and then, I will get a pang of dysphoria, but these are more like flashbacks. I think it can take the mind a while to rewire. Every now and then I will smile a certain way, or someone will look at me a certain way and for a second, I feel as if I am still female appearing. These are becoming more and more rare as the years go on.

Gender Transition as a Cure for Mental Health Conditions

I do, however, still have some challenging mental health conditions. I have often been asked why I still have these, should gender transition not have cured me?

There are a couple of reasons why mental health conditions remain. The first reason is that mental health issues do not disappear overnight. I have many years of poor mental health to undo, caused by living with untreated gender dysphoria for so long. Therefore for many people who transition, especially at an older age, there is a lot of damage to undo and a lot of emotional rebuilding to take place.

Transition As a Route to a Happier Fulfilled Life

The big difference when it comes to mental health challenges post-gender transition is the perspective from which they are viewed. Once upon a time, my focus was on completely eliminating any anxiety and depression.

However, I have come to realize that recovery doesn’t need to mean we are free from symptoms or challenges. Instead, recovery is the ability to live a happy life, regardless of the challenges we face.

Prior to transition, the distress I felt at living inside my body, made a happy life an impossibility. What gender transition has given me, is a body that is free from dysphoria and thus no longer a site of pain. Living inside a body that is, at last, a comfortable home, makes dealing with my ongoing challenges much easier. More importantly, living in a body that is free from gender dysphoria has for the first time given me hope and a burning desire to live.

I really hope that was helpful, and that it makes the links between gender dysphoria and mental health more understandable. Please do feel free to leave me a comment. For more information on transition and LGBT+ topics, visit my blogs on gender and sexuality.

Hello! My name is Finn and I have a passion for creating honest content, that inspires personal growth and promotes well-being.

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