Gender identity and mental health

Abstract

This article aims to review the implications of gender identity in psychic construction and mental health, without intending to be an exhaustive review, given the complexity of this issue. A tour of the conceptual definitions of gender identity is made, going through some explanatory models of it, as a way to understand this experience. Also, transgender reality as a psychosocial stress factor will be addressed and, from a clinical perspective, its psychic repercussions, emphasizing the differentiation of trans identities with the diagnostic entity called gender dysphoria. Finally, gender dysphoria will be characterized, focusing on the subjective disconfort secondary to gender discordance, its relationships with other psychiatric diagnoses, its psychosocial repercussions and the health care barriers that this group of people experiences.