WLRN has partnered with PolitiFact to fact-check Florida politicians. The Pulitzer Prize-winning team seeks to present the true facts, unaffected by agenda or biases.
Alongside the announcement that Meta was ending its relationship with independent fact-checkers, the social media company outlined new "hateful conduct" policies. Those policies explicitly permit users to call LGBTQ+ people "mentally ill" or "abnormal" without violating platform rules.
These changes are part of a larger shift in how Meta plans to moderate content and speech on its platforms, Facebook, Instagram and Threads. But these carve-outs could also allow the spread of misinformation.
Leading medical experts do not consider being gay or transgender to be a mental illness, and we’ve fact-checked claims to the contrary.
For people who identify as transgender, their sex — the biological category they were assigned at birth — does not match their gender identity, which is someone’s internal sense of being a man, woman or nonbinary gender.
Here's what Meta changed, and what medical experts say about LGBTQ+ people and mental health.
New Meta policy lets users call LGBTQ+ people "mentally ill"
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Jan. 7 video, "We're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse."
Meta has long had "Community Standards" for the content allowed on its platforms. Meta can take down posts that violate those standards.
When it updated its standards on "hateful conduct" on Jan. 7 to narrow what speech violated its policies, Meta specified that insults about "mental characteristics, including but not limited to allegations of stupidity, intellectual capacity and mental illness," are not allowed. That’s similar to the previous rules.
But it added a new exception: "We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality."
The Anti-Defamation League, a nongovernmental organization that tracks online extremism, says the term transgenderism "has been co-opted by anti-trans activists to characterize being transgender as an ideology rather than an innate identity."
In its updated "policy rationale," Meta wrote that although people may use insulting language or call for exclusion when discussing topics such as transgender rights or homosexuality, "Our policies are designed to allow room for these types of speech."
Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
Being gay or trans is not a mental health disorder, medical experts say
Although referring to LGBTQ+ people as mentally ill is now allowed on Meta’s platforms, that does not make it true or reflective of mainstream medical consensus.
Most major medical associations in the United States affirm that being trans is not a mental health disorder.
In 1973, homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the diagnostic guide published by the American Psychiatric Association. In 1990, it was removed from the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases.
Today, treatment that attempts to discourage or "treat" someone’s homosexuality is referred to as "conversion therapy" or "reparative therapy" and is condemned by most major medical organizations as ineffective and potentially harmful. Twenty-three states have passed laws prohibiting conversion therapy practices, according to Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank that tracks policy on LGBTQ+ issues.
Like homosexuality, the medical community previously pathologized being transgender, as a "disorder." But leading medical experts and most major medical associations no longer consider a person’s gender identity to be a mental illness.
In 2019, in the latest edition of WHO's International Classification of Diseases, the organization renamed its previous diagnosis given to transgender people from "transsexualism" to "gender incongruence" and moved it from the chapter on mental health disorders to a new section titled "conditions related to sexual health."
WHO in 2018 said in a press release that "evidence is now clear that it is not a mental disorder, and indeed classifying it in this can cause enormous stigma for people who are transgender."
Similarly, in 2013, the revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders changed the term "gender identity disorder" to "gender dysphoria" to reduce stigma around the diagnosis. The diagnosis was not totally removed because doing so could have threatened access to gender-affirming medical care.
However, being transgender and having gender dysphoria are not the same. Gender dysphoria is the experience of distress that can result when sex assigned at birth does not match gender identity. Not all trans people experience this distress or have gender dysphoria.
Although persistent gender dysphoria can cause distress and other mental health issues, being transgender is not itself a mental health disorder, according to experts.
Research suggests that higher rates of mental health struggles among LGBTQ+ people may be attributed to the social stigma and discrimination they experience.
Sources
- Interview with Dr. Jack Drescher, a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and past president of the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry, Jan. 9, 2025
- The Trevor Project, "2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health," accessed Jan. 9, 2025
- Medical News Today, "How common are mental health conditions among transgender people?," May 20, 2021
- Child Development Perspectives, "Advancing Research on Minority Stress and Resilience in Trans Children and Adolescents in the 21st Century," 2021
- Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, "Gender minority stress in trans and gender diverse adolescents and young people," 2021
- University of Utah Health, "Why Does the LGBTQIA+ Community Suffer from Poor Mental Health at Higher Rates?," July 7, 2021
- PolitiFact, "Meta ending third-party fact-checking partnership with US partners, including PolitiFact," Jan. 7, 2025
- Meta, "Hateful Conduct," accessed Jan. 7, 2025
- Meta, "More Speech and Fewer Mistakes," Jan. 7, 2025
- Meta, "Community Standards," accessed Jan. 8, 2025
- Meta, "Taking down violating content," Nov. 12, 2024
- Anti- Defamation League, "Transgenderism," accessed Jan. 9, 2025
- PolitiFact, "Vivek Ramaswamy got it wrong; being trans isn’t a mental health disorder," Sept. 28, 2023
- Psychology Today, "When Homosexuality Stopped Being a Mental Disorder," June 24, 2024
- Behavioral Sciences, "Out of DSM: Depathologizing Homosexuality," Dec. 2015
- Cornell University, "What does the scholarly research say about whether conversion therapy can alter sexual orientation without causing harm?," 2016
- NBC News, "American Medical Association backs nationwide conversion therapy ban," Nov. 21, 2019
- American Psychological Association, "Opposing conversion therapy," Oct. 10, 2023
- American Psychiatric Association, "Position Statement on Conversion Therapy and LGBTQ+ Patients," July 2024
- American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, "Conversion Therapy," Feb. 2018
- UK Government, "Conversion therapy: an evidence assessment and qualitative study," Oct. 29, 2021
- Minnesota Department of Health, "Summary of Findings: A Review of Scientific Evidence of Conversion Therapy," April 11, 2022
- Movement Advancement Project, "Conversion "Therapy" Laws," accessed Jan. 10, 2025
- The World Health Organization, "Gender incongruence and transgender health in the ICD," accessed Jan. 9, 2025
- PolitiFact, "‘Gender dysphoria’: What it is, what it isn’t and how history has changed its view," May 22, 2023
- The World Health Organization, "International Classification of Diseases," June 18, 2018
- Cleveland Clinic, "Gender Dysphoria: What It Is, Symptoms & Management," March 28, 2022
- MSNBC, "Being transgender no longer a 'mental disorder': APA," Dec. 4, 2012
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research, "Science Fact or Science Fiction: Is Gender Nonconformity a Mental Disorder?," Sept. 30, 2014
- KFF, "Mental Health Care Needs and Experiences Among LGBT+ People," June 30, 2023
- American Psychological Association, "A conceptual framework for clinical work with transgender and gender nonconforming clients: An adaptation of the Minority Stress Model," 2012
- American Medical Association, "AMA to states: Stop interfering in health care of transgender children," April 26, 2021
- Pediatrics, "Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children and Adolescents," Oct. 2018
- Endocrine Society, "Gender Dysphoria/Gender Incongruence Guideline Resources," Oct. 25, 2024
- Pediatric Endocrine Society, "Transgender Care," June 17, 2020
- American Psychological Association, "Answers to your questions about transgender people, gender identity, and gender expression," July 8, 2024
- American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, "Health Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse Individuals," March 2021
- American Psychiatric Association, "What is Gender Dysphoria," August 2022
- American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, "AACAP Statement Responding to Efforts to ban Evidence-Based Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth," Nov. 8, 2019
- World Professional Association for Transgender Health, "Standards of Care," accessed Jan. 9, 2025
- American Psychiatric Association, "Gender Dysphoria Diagnosis," 2013
Copyright 2025 WLRN Public Media
