The Complexities of Treatment Planning for Transgender Youth with Co-Occurring Severe Mental Illness: A Literature Review and Case Study.

Gender variance and dysphoria are present across all classes, ethnicities, and experiences, including among those with severe and chronic mental illness. In these, our most vulnerable populations, adequate assessment and treatment of gender dysphoria often is overlooked despite evidence that appropriate treatment of gender dysphoria leads to improvement in psychological functioning (Smith, van Goozen, Kuiper, & Cohen-Kettenis, 2005). The World Professional Association for Transgender Health recommend in their Standards of Care that somatic and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria should be made available to those with medical or mental illness with the caveat that "[the illness] must be reasonably well-controlled (2011)." In this article, we will utilize case-based material to elucidate the challenges of treating gender dysphoria in the context of complex mental illness such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and sexual trauma, and the pitfalls of defining "well-controlled" for the sake of treatment.