“It’s not a disease, it’s just a person’s awareness of self identity. We don’t talk about sexual orientation, but we try to help answer the question ‘who am I?’ Zan bill, gender dysphoria is a complex phenomenon that remains unknown to most “, report the experts of the Endocrinologists Association (Ame), which since 2014 have set up a dedicated interdisciplinary working group, and which with the collaboration of Consulcesi Club have created a professional training course aimed at doctors, nurses and other professionals. For the Ame it is in fact “important to create culture and create awareness, starting from the medical and health class”.
“Dysphoria, transgender, what does it mean? To understand this we must be willing to get out of the concept of a binary system which, in the collective imagination, sees the male and female gender as opposed. In reality, gender identity can be imagined as a spectrum in at the extremes there are the masculine and the feminine and, between these two poles, an infinite variety of possible gender identities and expressions “, says Antonio Prunas, psychologist expert in gender dysphoria and one of the authors of the Ecm course of Consulcesi.
“In a non-binary system – he underlines – contamination between genders, oscillations or fluid movements between genders or belonging to any gender are possible. On this conceptual basis the definitions of cisgender are born (a person feels that he belongs to the gender assigned to the birth), and transgender, which are people whose gender they feel they belong to does not coincide with that assigned to them at birth “.
Experts explain that “it is a personal condition”, which “falls within the most intimate and profound sphere of the subject. Gender inconsistency means the condition of people who have been assigned a specific gender at birth, but not during psychosexual development. they have identified themselves in the originally assigned gender. Among these, some people live in a situation of significant psycho-physical and social discomfort and are therefore affected by gender dysphoria “.
“A condition associated with clinically significant suffering – the specialists point out – often with impaired functioning in the social, work and affective spheres. Based on international studies, which speak of a percentage of the population that varies between 0.5 and 2.8% , an estimated T * population in Italy is between 240,000 and 1,696,000 people. An underestimated number – say the experts – because in Italy there are no epidemiological data and these people often live in the shadows, without undergoing medical examinations or checks “.
“There is no adequate care of these people from a medical point of view – comments Stefania Bonadonna, endocrinologist, coordinator of the working group of the AME on gender dysphoria and teacher of the Ecm course – starting from the terminological confusion, up to the scarce preparation that prevents people from being accompanied in the long transition process, a job that should involve various professionals from the assistance network “.