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It’s Not ‘All Psychological’: How the Medical Establishment Fails Transgender Patients

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January 31, 2014
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Dru Levasseur, Transgender Rights Project Director

From RH Reality Check:

Seeking health care when you’re sick or injured can sometimes be a confusing, nerve-racking, or frustrating experience. Patients, already in a compromised position, may not know how best to advocate for themselves or what rights they have. But for transgender and gender nonconforming people, just going to the doctor means risking mistreatment, misdiagnosis, hostility, or aggression.

A number of professional medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, have drafted resolutions in recent years affirming equal treatment for trans* and gender variant individuals. And according to M. Dru Levasseur, transgender rights project director at Lamba Legal, 17 states and more than 150 jurisdictions now have protections regarding gender identity. “These are all great steps,” Levasseur told RH Reality Check. “But one of the things we still hear is that, when people are at their most vulnerable moment of need, like going to the hospital for emergency care, horrible things still happen.”

Indeed, while medical protections for transgender patients may be gradually increasing, many in the trans* community continue to experience disturbing levels of discrimination from health-care providers.

Read the full article here.