Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Defined as congenital conditions in which development of chromosomal, gonadal, or anatomic sex is atypical, differences or disorders of sex development DSDs comprise many discrete diagnoses ranging from those associated with few phenotypic differences between affected and unaffected individuals to those where questions arise regarding gender of rearing, gonadal tumor risk, genital surgery, and fertility.
Controversies exist in numerous areas including how DSDs are conceptualized, how to refer to the set of conditions and those affected by them, and aspects of clinical management that extend from social media to legislative bodies, courts of law, medicine, clinical practice, and scholarly research in psychology and sociology.
In addition to these aspects, this review covers biological and social influences on psychosocial development and adjustment, the psychosocial and psychosexual adaptation of people born with DSDs, and roles for clinical psychologists in the clinical management of DSDs. Keywords: disorders of sex development, differences of sex development, DSD, intersex, psychological adaptation.
Medical conditionsβor categories of them, as in the case of differences or disorders of sex development DSDs 1 βare rarely the focus of topic reviews in the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. Yet print, broadcast, and social media have raised public awareness of people identifying as intersex. What is the relationship between intersex and the medical conditions falling under the umbrella term DSD?
What are the biological origins of DSDs? And how are DSDs specifically relevant to clinical psychology? There are also reports by international governmental and nongovernmental organizations challenging medical standards of care for people born with medical conditions that fall under the DSD umbrella; some of these standards have been equated to a form of torture Hum.
