DSM Assistant

Help with DSM diagnostic coding

The main problem with the DSM-4 modifiers is that they are sometimes very difficult to figure out from the manual Ñ you have to go back and forth between four different sections and three tables to get the valid modifiers for amphetamine-induced mood/anxiety/psychotic disorders, for instance. What DSM Assistant does is make this easy by displaying the applicable DSM modifiers for any diagnosis with a simple mouse-click.

The other difficulty is translating from a given DSM-4 diagnosis (with or without modifiers) to an accurate ICD-9 diagnostic code, if different from the DSM code. Most of the time you won't need to obsess about this, since every DSM-4 diagnostic code is also a valid ICD-9 code Ñ with a couple of exceptions (see 'Alcohol withdrawal' and 'Conduct disorder'). In those cases where for whatever reason you have to be precise about your ICD coding, DSM Assistant will give you the relevant fifth-digit variants for a given DSM-4 diagnosis, so you can hone down to the most accurate ICD-9 code.