Gender dysphoria is when a boy or a girl feels they belong to the wrong gender. Do you feel like that? Maybe a strange thing to most of us but for sufferers what can they do about it?
GD is when someone feels they belong to the wrong gender. So a boy would feel that he was a girl trapped in a boy's body, and a girl would feel she was a boy trapped in a girl's body.
Someone who has a lifelong conviction that they're trapped in the wrong body is called a transsexual.
This is totally different from being a transvestite, where a person likes dressing up in clothes of the opposite sex but doesn't feel that they're in the wrong body.

To be 'officially' diagnosed as having gender identity disorder, a person must strongly want to be, or believe they already belong to the opposite sex.
A famous example of this is Nadia from the UK Big Brother, who was born a boy. Some children and teens who experience gender dysphoria find that their feelings change as they reach adulthood and they no longer have feelings of belonging to the wrong gender.

The Gender Identity Research & Education Society (GIRES) estimates that about 1 in 4000 of the British population is receiving medical help for gender dysphoria. Boys with gender dysphoria outnumber girls by about 5 to 1.

The question is often asked, are people with gender dysphoria freaks?
Of course they are not!
It may be rare, but so is having one blue eye and one brown eye like Hollywood actress Kate Bosworth and no one calls her a freak! The real freaks are those who are intolerant of anyone different.

There is treatment for this and it is becoming more common. Transsexual people can have 'gender reassignment', but until they're 18 they'd be unlikely to go further than an initial step. However, transsexual teens can be prescribed drugs to 'block' puberty.

Yes there are some criteria that have to be met by the person considering this very major step.

First the person must live as a member of the opposite sex, full time, for at least a year. After this, they would take either male or female hormones (depending on whether they wanted to become male or female) for at least a year - sometimes longer. These would soften body hair and cause breast development in men, and cause beard growth, a deeper voice and muscle development in women. Only after all this, they could have surgery to become a man or a woman permanently: a 'sex change operation'.

I thought I would open this subject up again as there is a really excellent documentary on channel 4 at the moment called 'My Transexual Summer' It follows a group of trans of both sexes as they struggle to come to terms with what is necessary for them to go through to active the gender that they have always known that they are. It is really interesting and last week dealt with a young man telling his mother he wanted to be woman which was a real nervous moment for him.