Gender Identity disorder
Background
Gender Identity disorder: Gender Dysphoria
Gender Identity disorders are rare conditions mainly arising from psychological conflicts within individuals between their physically determined gender and their beliefs and perceptions regarding their personal appraisal of their gender.
A number of causes of Gender Identity disorders have been suggested including genetics, environment, parenting, pre-birth hormonal influences, and exposure early in life to inappropriate sexual material. However, the cause usually remains unidentified and none of the above is necessary.
The two main classifications of Gender Identity disorder are to be found in the International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision (ICD 10) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV).
The main diagnostic criteria are:
- Repeatedly expressing a persistent wish to identify with, and be one of, the opposite sex including cross-dressing, preference for cross-sex roles and friends of the opposite sex. In adults and adolescents this often progresses to actions and not just desires;
- Persistent anxieties and feelings that their physical gender is not appropriate for them as individuals, even to the extent of believing they have "been born in the wrong body". In children this is expressed in their feelings, the way they play and behave, the toys and clothes they prefer and certainty that they do not wish to develop the usual adolescent sexual characteristics of their physical gender. In adults this can progress to a desire to take action to alter their physical gender;
- Individuals do not have a specific intersex condition; that is to say, their general physical, including genital, features are appropriate for their genetically determined gender - it is the individuals' overwhelming psychological conviction that they are in fact "made to be" the opposite gender which is characteristic;
- The individual shows major distress in important areas of social interaction, work or other important areas of life as a result of their Gender Identity disorder.
Gender identity disorders in children 
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