World WHO finally says transgenderism is not a mental illness In its latest catalogue, the World Health Organisation calls the condition ‘gender incongruence’ and, if accepted by member states, will come into effect in 2022 BL PREMIUM

Geneva— Transgender people, who identify as the opposite gender to the one they were born with, should no longer be considered mentally ill, according to a new UN categorisation. The World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a new catalogue on Monday covering 55,000 diseases, injuries and causes of death, in which it discreetly recategorised transgenderism. The new catalogue, which still needs to be approved by UN member countries, so-called "gender incongruence" is now listed under "conditions related to sexual health", instead of "mental, behavioural and neuro-developmental disorders". "We expect [the recategorisation] will reduce stigma," Lale Say, the co-ordinator of WHO’s department of reproductive health and research, told AFP on Tuesday. WHO says gender incongruence is characterised as a "marked and persistent incongruence between an individual’s experienced gender and the assigned sex". Several new chapters appear in the first update of WHO’s International Classification of Dis...