The global political Left is having a collective conniption over a decision by the government of Peru to provide better mental health care for people suffering from transgender ideology and related illnesses. The Peruvian health ministry announced the decision this week in an effort to “guarantee full coverage of medical attention for mental health,” for men who believe they’re women and vice versa.
This decision subjects no one to any sort of conversion therapy; it merely ensures that people so afflicted have access to appropriate treatment under the nation’s Essential Health Insurance Plan. The decree, signed by Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, includes improved mental health coverage for people suffering from “transsexualism, dual-role transvestism, gender identity disorder in childhood, other gender identity disorders and fetishistic transvestism.”
It was upon announcing these improvements to mental health care that all hell broke loose. A headline in the Daily Mail reports that the decision is “sparking fury” among transgender ideologues. Human Right Watch calls the move “bigotry,” while in Congress, Rep. Robert Garcia of California issued a statement calling it “homophobic.”
The rage surrounding Peru’s decision suggests policy makers in Lima are doing something unprecedented in human history. In truth, it signals a return to normalcy in how the medical community addresses such ailments and best meets the mental health needs of people suffering from a recognized illness.
Behaviors that manifest themselves through trans ideology were classified as a mental disorder by the World Health Organization as recently as 2019. But through the application of political pressure, the WHO changed its position five years ago to reflect the preferred ideology of the authoritarian Left, which recognized trans ideology as a potent means of separating people from their families and reality itself.
A casual observer would reasonably conclude that transgender ideology is a form of mental illness because it’s marked by a person’s belief that they are something they’re not and can never be. In the psychiatric profession this is considered a delusional disorder, defined by the renown Cleveland Clinic as “an unshakable belief in something that’s untrue.”
The Cleveland Clinic explains that people suffering from this psychotic disorder often experience one of two broad categories of delusions - bizarre and non-bizarre. A non-bizarre delusion is a belief in something that could possibly be true, like the feeling that you’re being followed or a lover cheating on you. By comparison, bizarre delusions “include beliefs that are impossible in our reality.”
These clinical definitions apply, for example, to any man claiming to be a woman and demanding to be recognized as such despite his male chromosomal structure, hormonal balance, skeletal and muscular physiology and his anatomy. Such a belief is demonstrably unsupportable in reality. While a man may mutilate his body or corrupt his endocrine system in an attempt to appear female, the inescapable truth is that he’s a man and always will be.
People suffering from bizarre delusions deserve appropriate, comprehensive and compassionate mental health care. This is what Peru has recognized and is now doing as a matter of policy. Providing care that meets the mental health needs of patients is the polar opposite of the false criticisms leveled against the government, and reveals these proponents of trans ideology as willing to harm people to advance their political agenda. It is this deliberate harming of people that makes it so evil.
Peru’s decision to better care for those suffering from trans ideology follows the April report from esteemed British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass on how the National Health Service of the United Kingdom has been mistreating similarly afflicted people there. Slowly, health authorities around the world are recognizing the errors of society and the medical community in dealing appropriately with people demonstrating behaviors reflecting trans ideology.
The Left’s meltdown in response to these events in Peru and the UK is designed to give the false impression that treating this ideology as a mental illness is radical when in fact, it is simply a return to what people have known from time immemorial: Men are men and women are women. If someone believes otherwise for themself and demands others believe their delusion, they require a level of care commensurate with the severity of their illness, and which will restore them to a normal, healthy life. That is what Peru is doing and it will be fascinating to see when the next domino falls.