system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Transgenderism is a mental illness.

I understand that I'll probably get a lot of hate for posting this but this has been going back and forth on my mind for a while now. I study biochem in college and I am looking to go into pharmaceutics, this has made me take extensive  classes in psychology, neurology, and anatomy. From what I've learned it seems to me that the confusion of gender identity within a person is a illness or mental disorder and should be studied more vigorously before society just opens its arms in acceptance. I believe that people's brain chemistry is out of homeostasis leading certain individuals to create a false image of self within their consciousness. It has been found that people with gender confusion are at a higher risk of anxiety, depression, and suicide. So instead of trying to demand acceptance why not push for more understanding and help. 

Do not be confused, I am for gay rights and I do not have a phobia of trans people. I am just trying to understand.
gpt
It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Being gay 30 years ago was considered a mental illness for the precise reasons that you're arguing - because gay people were more prone to depression and suicide. But it turns out that the higher rates of depression and suicide were due to lack of societal acceptance, and NOT due to the actual phenomenon of gayness. Which is why suicide rates amongst homosexual individuals have plummeted since the gay movement has reached a level of equal rights.

It's impossible to say YET whether the higher rates of depression and suicide are from gender confusion or from lack of societal acceptance. The only way we're going to find out is by increasing societal acceptance, because there is no cure for being transgender.

If like with gay people, depression and suicide rates bottomed out after societal acceptance, then you would need to revise your hypothesis. Mental illnesses require, as part of their definition, the condition of the mental illness to be the *source* of conflict and higher suicide rates. From the DSM:

>A mental disorder is a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress or disability or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom

In short, increasing societal acceptance to reduce the negative mental impacts: 

* worked for gay people
* might work for transgender people
* we have no current means of addressing the actual disorder itself, so why not try to increase acceptance of it to reduce suffering?