The World Health Organization (WHO) is moving closer toward declassifying transgender identity as a mental disorder in its global list of medical conditions, reports the New York Times.

The update has been approved in committee and is being reviewed for the next edition of WHO's global guidebook, International Classification of Diseases.

“The intention is to reduce barriers to care,” said psychologist Geoffrey Reed, who is overseeing the guide's mental health and behavior disorders section. Reed says the proposed update has met no resistance so far, and will likely be included in the next update in 2018.

A study Reed authored in in Lancet Psychiatry this week revealed that, of 250 patients at a trans health clinic, most had anxiety over how they were treated by their family, friends and community, not about their gender identity.

Removing the stigma of mental illness is a welcome change for the trans community, but some advocates are still concerned—the update wouldn't remove transgender from the guide altogether, but move it into a new category: "Conditions related to sexual health."

Non-cisgender status will still be viewed as something deviant, but the reality is transitioning usually requires approvals from insurance companies, who are familiar with treating "conditions."

“I think there is a bit of a problem with the idea of putting it in a chapter on sexual health because it has nothing to do with sex," said Dr. Griet De Cuypere, a board member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. “If it’s possible to have it more separately, it would be better."

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has re-ordered trangender identity from "sexual deviations" to “psychosexual disorders” and then, in 1994, "sexual and gender identity disorders" In 2013, the designation was changed again to "gender dysphoria."

Another sticking point with the WHO guidelines: A proposal to change terminology from "transsexualism" to "gender incongruence."

Writes the Times:

One problem is that “incongruence” resonates differently in different languages. “In English it sounds kind of neutral — my association is with geometry,” Dr. Reed said. “But in Spanish it sounds very bad, it sounds kind of psychotic.”

So, in Spanish, the proposal is “gender discordance,” which, he said, “in English sounds really bad.”

Reed expressed frustration that committee members are having difficulty agreeing on anything.

"One of the people at one of the meetings said we could call this 'happy unicorns dancing by the edge of the stream' and there’d be an objection to it.”