The gender-affirming model of care is incompatible with competent, ethical medical practice

Abstract

Objective: To examine the compatibility of gender-affirming care with the principles and practices of psychiatry. Conclusions: The assumption that there is no pathology involved in the development of gender diversity is a necessary precondition for the unquestioning affirmation of self-reported gender identity. Cases where psychosis is the undeniable cause of gender diversity demonstrate this assumption is categorically false. To protect this false assumption, gender-affirming guidelines forbid the application of the core psychiatric competencies of phenomenology and psychopathology to the assessment of gender diversity. They substitute the political goal of expanding personal liberty for the evidence-based medicine processes of clinical reasoning, rendering them incompatible with competent, ethical medical practice.