About the new DSM - shyness and introversion are not mental disorders.

The AP carried this report, today;  one of the most frustrating pieces I have ever read.   

(AP) - A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.

It's an issue that raises ethical questions, and some experts urge caution in treating children with puberty-blocking drugs and hormones.

An 8-year-old second-grader in Los Angeles is a typical patient. Born a girl, the child announced at 18 months, "I a boy" and has stuck with that belief. The family was shocked but now refers to the child as a boy and is watching for the first signs of puberty to begin treatment, his mother told The Associated Press.

Pediatricians need to know these kids exist and deserve treatment, said Dr. Norman Spack, author of one of three reports published Monday and director of one of the nation's first gender identity medical clinics, at Children's Hospital Boston.

"If you open the doors, these are the kids who come. They're out there. They're in your practices," Spack said in an interview.

Switching gender roles and occasionally pretending to be the opposite sex is common in young children. But these kids are different. They feel certain they were born with the wrong bodies.

To think that this level of malpractice is accepted in this country is one of the surest indicators  that our civilization has turned the corner is already gone over the the cliff.  The new DSM is in production,  as I write.  In this idiot's guide to the so-called "science" of psycho-therapy,  this prognostic manual now considers "shyness"  and "introversion" as mental disorders worthy of prescriptive drug treatment. As regards gender confusion,  it is clear that the patient is being enabled as the mentally confused diagnose their own problematic issues.  "Because they "feel certain,"  apparently makes it so.  

Look,  the very thing that defines you as male or female is your personal physiology.  Just as certain as a chicken is not a horse,  so, too,  is a female not a male.  Understand that men are much more often those who seek "gender reassignment."  And years later,  after living as a woman,  they go bald,  they have to deal with prostate cancer (a man's disease); they can never have off-spring, they have to use different deodorants,  they grow hair on their backs,   and they look ugly as hell  --  most of them, anyway.   

Whatever happened to the male (for example)  "reality."   "Doc,  help me,  I think I am a woman" should be taken with the same seriousness in mind,  as the statement,  "Doc help me have a baby;  help me to fly, and . . . . . . .  oh, my gawd,  I think I am an airplane."  

Understand that the mental health industry has much to offer,  but in recent years,  it has fled the reservation,  fallen in love with the sound of its own prognostications  . . . . . . .  and we are the weaker society because of it.