Press For Change campaigns for the rights of trans people: it’s not a support group.  So this is not the place to look for links to information on medical treatments available for trans people … those resources will best be found by following links from the groups listed in our page of links to trans organisations.

We aim to use this page to point towards resources which will help help trans people understand the nature and origins of the medical and psychiatric labels which are applied to them … and to provide to practical information on access to treatment.

Medical information | Critiques | Science | Professional associations | Medical campaigners & support groups

Medical information

• The International Journal Of Transgenderism
  The IJT is the first scientific journal on transgenderism.  The journal is peer reviewed and its editorial board consists of many leading scientists from all over the world.  In common with most such journals, it consists of writings about trans people, with our own voices notably absent.
• British Medical Journal
  A wonderful site … with the full text of all issues of the BMJ since January 1995, with a powerful and easy-to-use search engine.  Nicely laid out, with minimal graphics and clean HTML.
• Kings Fund Medical links
  A massive collection of links to medical resources, in all sorts of categories from abstracts of scholarly papers to NHS structures.

Still under development, but looks promising.  This NHS project aims to “provide easy access to best current knowledge” and to “improve health and healthcare, clinical practice and patient choice”.

Critiques

Even though we are increasingly winning legal recognition and improvements in our civil status in many countries around the world, there is still widespread ignorance of the oppressive and stigmatising terms on which we can gain access to medicine.  Sexual stereotyping, humiliating and time-wasting “assessment”, psychiatric control (and sometimes abuse) are all a part of the path faced by all trans people.
To understand how and why these structures arose, and how the try reading some of the references below on medical and psychiatric approaches to trans people … and be prepared for a long catalogue of social control masquerading as protecting the individual: long after gay and lesbian people have shaken off the label, trans people are still classified as “mentally disordered”.

• The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) formerly the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association
  HBIGDA is a American-based professional association of those involved in providing medical care to trans people.  Its so-called “Standards of Care” are widely cited as guidelines … and widely condemned for their restrictions on trans people, for their relentless pathologisation, and for the failure to recommend any protectionagainst psychiatric abuse.  The most recent (2001) version of the Standards of Care is available on this website, and includes the clear statement that “The Gender Identity Disorders are Mental Disorders”.  Thanks a bunch, folks.
• “The Disparate Classification of Gender and Sexual Orientation in American Psychiatry”
  by Katherine K. Wilson, of the Gender Identity Center of Colorado.
  “In 1973, the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association voted to delete homosexuality as a mental disorder from the seventh printing of the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-II.  Twenty-three years later, the inclusion of diagnostic categories for Gender Identity Disorder and Transvestic Fetishism in the fourth edition of the DSM continues to raise questions of consistency.  In this paper, issues of gender identity and sexual orientation are compared in light of current definitions of mental disorder.”
• Sex Reassignment at Birth: A Long Term Review and Clinical Implications
  Trans people have to fight to gain access to medical treatment … but intersex people often have it imposed on them in infancy.  Professor Milton Diamond exposes the limitations of this process.

Science

• A Sex Difference in the Brain
  Transgendered people should not have to rely on the scientific evidence of a microscopic part of their brains in order to lay claim to the same common rights as others.  We exist in sufficient numbers, all recounting similar histories, and it shouldn’t be necessary to establish why we exist in order to accept the fact that we do.  Nevertheless, this piece of research, published in the Autumn of 1996 has probably done more than any other medical contribution to undermine the psychiatric labelling of us, and turn the tide of opinion towards an acceptance of transsexual peoples’ imperatives.
• The International Journal Of Transgenderism
  The IJT is the first scientific journal on transgenderism.  The journal is peer reviewed and its editorial board consists of many leading scientists from all over the world.  In common with most such journals, it consists of writings about trans people, with our own voices notably absent.

Professional associations

• The General Medical Council
  the GMC licenses doctors to practice in the United Kingdom, and has legal powers to regulate the profession.  It will consider complaints against doctors, and if a serious complaint is upheld it has the power to prevent the doctor from continuing to practice.  It guidelines on “The Duties of a Doctor” and “Good Medical Practice” set out the standards which doctor are required to follow.
• The British Medical Association
  the BMA is the professional body representing more than 100,000 doctors in the United Kingdom.
• The Royal College of Psychiatrists
  The Royal College of Psychiatrists is the professional and educational body for psychiatrists in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
• Royal College for General Practitioners
  The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) is the academic organisation in the UK for general practitioners.  Its aim is to encourage and maintain the highest standards of general medical practice and act as the ’voice’ of general practitioners on education, training and standards issues.

Medical campaigners and support groups

• MIND — The Mental Health Charity
  Despite our classification in the DSM-IV, Press For Change does not believe that trans people are mentally ill.  But access to the medical treatment we seek is available only through psychiatrists, and can be an uncomfortable experience.  MIND provides advice and information to the mentally ill and to psychiatric patients, and has a specialist legal service to assist with problematic cases.
• LGBT Health UK
• Health with Pride
• LGBT Health Summit
• Spectrum (Brighton)