Croatia Needs a Gender Incongruence Diagnosis for Prepubertal Children.

Abstract

First of all, we want to emphasize that we completely understand arguments given against the diagnosis, especially clinical ones (prepubertal individuals need psychological space, support, and information, not medical treatment and diagnosis). We also agree and support all efforts against the pathologization and stigmatization of gender variant persons. The shift in expert opinion, in which mere gender non-conformity is seen as a variation rather than a disorder, as can be seen in the Standards of Care for transgender persons of the WPATH 2011 and in the DSM-5, no doubt contributes to the psychological welfare of gender variant people. However, even in the countries representing benchmarks of good practice in the care of individuals with GI, not all health experts adopt the same approach toward supporting transgender people, and trans-healthcare providers have differing attitudes according to Gender Incongruence of Adolescence and Adulthood (GIAA) and Gender Incongruence in Childhood (GIC) diagnosis (Winter, De Cuypere, Green, Kane, & Knudson, 2016).