This document is a submission made in 2018 by the APS to the Australian Human Rights Commission's Research Project into the human rights of people born with variations in sex characteristics in the context of medical interventions.
Having an intersex variation is not a mental health issue in itself, but mental health issues may arise due to perceived conflicts with social and cultural ideas about sex. Additional mental health issues can emerge as a result of surgeries and hormone treatments that may be imposed on infants and young people throughout childhood and adolescence. Further, many laws, customs and other institutional barriers currently discriminate against intersex people and/or do not properly acknowledge their existence.
Overall, the APS believes that decisions and processes regarding medical intervention need to focus primarily on the individual’s wellbeing, over and above a concern for social integration which often means normalisation.
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