Validity of categories related to gender identity in ICD-11 and DSM-5 among transgender individuals who seek gender-affirming medical procedures

Abstract

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE : The most recent versions of the two main mental disorders classifications-the World Health Organization's ICD-11 and the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5-differ substantially in their diagnostic categories related to transgender identity. ICD-11 gender incongruence (GI), in contrast to DSM-5 gender dysphoria (GD), is explicitly not a mental disorder; neither distress nor dysfunction is a required feature. The objective was compared ICD-11 and DSM-5 diagnostic requirements in terms of their sensitivity, specificity, discriminability and ability to predict the use of gender-affirming medical procedures. METHOD : A total of 649 of transgender adults in six countries completed a retrospective structured interview. RESULTS : Using ROC analysis, sensitivity of the diagnostic requirements was equivalent for both systems, but ICD-11 showed greater specificity than DSM-5. Regression analyses indicated that history of hormones and/or surgery was predicted by variables that are an intrinsic aspect of GI/GD more than by distress and dysfunction. IRT analyses showed that the ICD-11 diagnostic formulation was more parsimonious and contained more information about caseness than the DSM-5 model. CONCLUSIONS : This study supports the ICD-11 position that GI/GD is not a mental disorder; additional diagnostic requirements of distress and/or dysfunction in DSM-5 reduce the predictive power of the diagnostic model.