Zach Avery, 5 Diagnosed With Gender Identity Disor

[Misfit]

Five-year-old boy lives as girl in youngest case of Gender Identity Disorder - Telegraph

A little boy who decided he was a girl trapped in a boy's body has become one of the youngest-ever children to have his decision backed by the NHS - aged just four.

With his blonde pigtails and purple tutu, Zach Avery, now five, has been living as a girl for more than a year.

 

[libertytyranny]

No child should be labeled with ANY mental disorder. Thats why the DSM has age requirements for most things.

 

[twinoaks207]

No child should be labeled with ANY mental disorder. Thats why the DSM has age requirements for most things.

Personally, I agree with you. Unfortunately, the mental health professionals seem like they don't agree with us. I rarely use Wikipedia as a resource however, this article gives a good overview of the issue and contains several links to external sites for verification and clarification. Unfortunately, it does not seem as though the DSM IV is anywhere on-line in its entirety, although I have not checked data base resources yet and I'm sure that it can probably be found in one of those.

There does seem to be some controversy surrounding the diagnosis and it will be interesting to see how it is handled in the up-coming DSM-V, due out sometime in 2013.

Basically (for those who don't look at the provided link) the "in children" piece is intended to cover those children who have not yet reached puberty.

In my opinion (FWIW), sometimes some mental health professionals tend to see "crazy" where it doesn't exist. I know of at least two instances of this that I have personally witnessed, and both were due to the personal bias of the practitioner. We must keep in mind that they are, after all, human, and subject to making mistakes just like the rest of us human beings.