Morality-Driven Illnesses

“… moral standards were the basis for identifying gender incongruence as a mental illness until this month, when a different set of moral standards were used to justify eliminating it as a mental illness.”

“In an article titled Morality-Driven Illnesses, Chuck Ruby, Executive Director of the International Society for Ethical Psychology & Psychiatry (ISEPP) has written:

“In response to political pressure, The World Health Organization’s legislative body just ratified a June 2018 proposal to redesignate ‘gender incongruence’ (called ‘gender dysphoria’ in the DSM) so that it is no longer a mental illness.1 This change will be reflected in the 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). While I applaud any effort to depathologize natural human variation in interests and preferences, is this really how it works? Mental illnesses are voted in an out of existence because of political pressure and changes in ideas about morality? Well, yes, that is precisely how it works.

The advocates of this change claim it ‘…was taken out from the mental health disorders because we had a better understanding that this wasn’t actually a mental health condition and leaving it there was causing stigma.’2 But we don’t identify real illnesses this way. Instead, we study the problem to determine what is causing the symptoms. It is only after we have a good theoretical hypothesis for, or actually find, the bodily defect responsible for the symptoms that we dub it an illness. We don’t merely claim that we have a ‘better understanding’ of it without providing any scientific evidence or critical reasoning. It seems that ‘a better understanding’ in this case means that they just thought it was a good idea to do it that way. …”

You can read more here.

  1. https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/05/27/new-health-guidelines-propel-transgender-rights
  2. https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/health/who-transgender-reclassified-not-mental-disorder/index.html, paragraph 5.
5/5 - (1 vote)

1 Comment

  1. Jay A. J. Shuck

    After reading several of your articles, I’m not sure I agree with all your methodology or conclusions. However, I appreciate your zeal for a scientificlly supported discipline and concur with that motivation. IMO, all decisions have a moral component, but a diagnosis based on community standards is flawed from the start.

    Reply

Any reply would be very welcome

Follow

Get the latest posts delivered to your mailbox:

Your email address will not be passed to any other organisation. It will only be used to send you new posts made on this website.

MENU