The American Psychiatric Association’s annual general meeting is taking place in San Francisco next week. In advance of that an online petition has appeared. It is a rather good one. Here’s what it says:

“We, the undersigned, support the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) own goal of making its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) a scientific document, based on empirical research and devoid of cultural bias. A diagnosis of a mental disorder can have a severe adverse impact on employment opportunities, child custody determinations, an individual’s well-being, and other areas of functioning. Therefore we urge the APA to remove all diagnoses that are not based upon peer-reviewed, empirical research, demonstrating distress or dysfunction, from the DSM. The APA specifically should not promote current social norms or values as a basis for clinical judgments.”

Got that? The APA specifically should not promote current social norms or values as a basis for clinical judgments. I think that says it all really. The purpose of psychiatry should be to help people who are distressed, not to invent “paraphilias” as an excuse for persecuting people who are going about their lives peaceably and happily, but don’t happen to conform to what some psychiatrist thinks should be “normal”.

This is not just about pathologizing trans people. It is about protecting kids from being forced into rigid gender roles; it is about not going back to the days in which being gay was seen as a “mental disorder”; and not going back to the days in which a woman who enjoyed sex could be labeled a “nymphomaniac” and put in an asylum.

You can find the petition here.

And if you are in San Francisco on the 18th details of the protest can be found on Facebook.

Thank you.