The World Health Organization uses gender incongruence as a way to describe transgender people, and it is now removed in the list of mental disorders, voted by WHO's legislative panel. This classification is expected to improve the acceptance among transgender people in society while making significant health resources ready and available for them; this was stated by the United Nations last year when they announced the change.
The classification now appears in the 11th revision, seen in the International Statistical Classification of Disease and Related Health Problems, and the WHO assembly took it in Switzerland. The change will go on full effect by January 2022. The World Health Organization uses the term gender incongruence as a way to describe people whose gender identity is not the same as the gender that they were born in.
Dr. Lale Say, the coordinator of WHO's Adolescents and at-Risk Populations team, said that the term was removed from the list of mental health disorders because they now understand that it is not a mental condition and labeling it as one can cause stigma amongst transgender people.
To help transgender people access to health interventions that they need, the term was removed from the list. This move was praised by LGBT groups all over the world.
Julia Ehrt, the previous executive director of Transgender Europe, said that the move made by WHO was a direct result of the enormous effort done by gender diverse activists and transgender people worldwide. They have fought long and hard to insist and instill their human rights, and WHO agreeing that it is not a mental illness is the result of their hard work and hopefully a step to help them have their important place in society.
In the past decades, removing categories that are affecting gender diverse people and transgender people were deemed impossible.
Today, depathologization is achievable and can benefit the members of the LGBT community. Although this move may not fully affect their needs for health care, it can help reduce the social stigmas against transgender people and educate society about the LGBT community.
In 1990, WHO stated that a person's sexual orientation is not a mental disorder, thus improving the conditions of those who were forced to go to concentration camps to 'cure' them of being gay. This is now the second time that they removed a classification that is related to sexuality in their list of disorders.
