Depathologization (去病理化)

Depathologization means a diagnostic system stops treating a sexual orientation or gender status as a disease in itself. For homosexuality, three dates are cited most often. On May 17, 1990, the WHO-approved ICD-10 removed homosexuality from its classification of mental disorders. In 2001, China’s own diagnostic manual CCMD-3 followed, no longer classing homosexuality as a mental disorder. And ICD-11 — adopted in 2019, in force since 2022 — went further, deleting leftover orientation-related categories and moving “gender incongruence” out of the mental disorders chapter altogether.

The underlying logic is simple: a condition that causes no functional impairment and no inherent distress is not a disease. The distress many gay and lesbian people do experience traces mainly to stigma and pressure, not to orientation itself.

Register note: standard in formal and academic writing; Chinese community speech sometimes calls it zhaimao, “taking off the hat” (removing the label). It describes a change in classification, not a verdict on whether anyone needs support — LGBTQ+ people can seek counseling for any reason, and doing so has nothing to do with being “ill.”

Common misreading: framing depathologization as “political correctness overriding science.” The causality ran the other way: decades of empirical research established that homosexuality is not a disorder, and the classifications were revised to catch up. See the myth-busting page.