Statement of values

Founded by psychologists and service users, EuroPSI draws on a number of disciplines including social sciences, gender studies, medicine, bioethics, and organisational development, to expand on the currently delimiting responses to atypical sex anatomies in Westernised societies, where variations have come to be understood in disease terms.

The difference-as-disease ideology has sent medicine and psychology down the narrow path of locating all problems inside the person. Clinical interventions are performed to 'normalise' bodies to reinforce a binary sex embodiment. Nowadays, these interventions are supposed to be presented as a choice. However, they are often experienced by service users as a clinical recommendation.

Many psychosocial professionals and service users are sceptical of the presumed linear relationship between normalising interventions and psychological well-being. Effective psychosocial support should be in place before families and individuals are confronted with normalising interventions. Furthermore, the offer of elective interventions should be accompanied by a commitment to overcome social prejudices that diminish the psychological well-being of the recipients.