According to the reading, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
contains descriptions, symptoms, and other criteria for diagnosing mental disorders. It
provides a common language for clinicians to communicate about their patients and
establishes consistent and reliable diagnoses that can be used in the research of mental
disorders. ICD-10 helps billing staff code and bill more accurately. Because of these
differences, a behavioural health provider's EHR system should incorporate both types of
coding.
The DSM-5 is considered the most comprehensive and critical resource for mental health
professionals today. The DSM is a manual for the assessment and diagnosis of mental
disorders and is widely used by therapists, social workers, psychologists, and other
behavioural and mental health professionals in treating their patients. The DSM does not
include information or guidelines for the treatment of any disorder but focuses on assisting the
healthcare provider in determining an accurate diagnosis and classification.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a commonly used diagnostic
classification system that helps healthcare professionals in order to identify mental health
problems. DSM has been published by the American Psychiatric Association and revised a
number of times over the years (Baglama, 2016). It is a widely used classification system in
the United States. However, its usage has increased significantly in other countries also.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is needed in the healthcare setting for a
number of reasons. DSM acts as a helpful as well as a useful diagnostic tool that can be used
by healthcare professionals in order to diagnose and clarify a disorder. It provides a complete
list of symptoms and enables the clinicians to reach better conclusions relating to a disorder. It
also helps in increasing the speed of diagnosis of a specific disorder (Baglama, 2016). It
facilitates proper communication between mental health care administrators, mental health
care professionals, as well as the public. Moreover, it serves as a manual providing effective
guidance to the health care professionals for diagnosis, research, as well as treatment.
The use of DSM provides several benefits in terms of behavioural and mental health in
comparison to ICD-10. While ICD-10 has been written by National Centre for Healthcare
statistics (NCH) and the World Health Organization (WHO), DSM has been developed by
professional psychiatrists and finalized by American Psychiatric Association (APA). One of
the significant benefits is that DSM provides healthcare professionals with a universal
diagnostic system for the identification or diagnosis of mental health issues. It is a beneficial
tool for clinical psychologists as well as psychiatrists. The preliminary diagnosis allows for
better treatment of the patients (Baglama, 2016).
The ICD-10 is used for the classification of all illnesses after diagnosis and inpatient claims.
However, DSM is exclusively used for classifying the different mental health disorders (Key
differences between ICD-10 & DSM-5 - outsource2india. Outsource to India, 2021).
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) standardizes the treatment as
well as diagnosis of mental health disorders. It ensures that the patients can get helpful and
appropriate treatment irrespective of their social class, locations, as well as their ability to pay.
It ensures concrete assessment of the mental health issues and allows the healthcare
professionals to develop specific therapy to enhance the effectiveness of the treatment. This, in
turn, enhance the overall mental health outcomes of the patients.
DSM provides research guidance in the field of mental health. The diagnostic checklist of
DSM ensures that different groups of researchers are researching the same mental health
disorders. It helps in better identification of the various symptoms and causes of mental health
issues, thereby increasing the chances of better treatment. The use of DSM eliminates the need
for a lot of guesswork by mental health professionals. The diagnostic criteria of DSM serve as
a map to enable the healthcare professionals to deliver proper treatment to the patients through
accurate diagnosis. This also enhances the mental health outcomes for the patients. DSM is an
important standard for diagnosing the mental health conditions of individuals.
DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is the standard classification of
mental disorders that uses a common language and standard criteria used by mental health
professionals. DSM gives descriptions of mental health conditions ranging from anxiety and
mood disorders to substance related and personality disorders dividing them into categories.
Each category has a list of symptoms and guidelines providers can use to determine whether a
patient meets the criteria for one or more diagnostic categories. DSM allows for a common
language to describe mental health disorders and creates consistency. With the help of DSM
more diagnosis can be made which helps with the study, research, and treatment of mental
illness. With ICD, the focus is overall health. ICD does cover mental health and behavioural
disorders but not in as much depth as the DSM. DSM was developed for diagnosis while ICD
was developed for coding.
DSM is very much needed because it is for psychiatric disorders and diseases. It's more
thorough when it comes to descriptions. DSM is not used for reimbursement like ICD-10, but
now ICD-11 is used. ICD-10 does not specify the diagnosis specifically. The ICD-10 will just
give you the code for the illness that you put in or look up. DSM will specify the code,
category, and disease for mental health patients. The important thing to remember is that
DSM-V helps clinicians diagnose behavioural health issues more accurately. ICD-10 helps
billing staff code and bill more accurately, but because of these differences a behavioural
health provider's EHR system should incorporate both types of coding. DSM contains
descriptions, symptoms, and other criteria for diagnosing mental disorders. It provides a
common language for clinicians to communicate about their patients and establishes
consistent and reliable diagnoses that can be used in the research pertaining to mental
disorders. DSM diagnoses help social workers and other mental health professionals
understand clients, guiding their interventions from an evidence-based perspective. Diagnosis
helps professionals with goal setting, treatment planning, and determining a client's prognosis.
ICD does cover mental health issues and behavioural disorders but not in as much depth as
DSM. DSM was made for diagnosing while ICD was developed for coding and actual
reimbursement. The DSM is a manual for the assessment and diagnosis of mental disorders
and is used by therapists, psychologists, and other behavioural and mental health
professionals. It has symptoms, descriptions, and other guidelines for diagnosing mental
disorders. DSM is needed because it provides a reliable way for providers and clinical staff to
communicate about the patient's condition. It helps keep all staff on the same page in the
facility and in any other facilities the patient may go to. DSM helps cause less confusion and
mistakes when it comes to the treatment the patient receives because the language or
communication used will be the same. The DSM does not include information or instructions
for the treatment of any disorder but instead concentrates on helping the provider with
deciding on an accurate diagnosis and classification.
The DSM is needed because now more than before because of the awareness that society has
on mental illness. Disorders from anxiety, depression, PTSD, and all sorts of spectrum
disorders. With a push for insurances to cover mental healthcare such as psychological exams
and medications. Mental health is not so black and white because there is not an x-ray or lab
work that can give a singular diagnosis like diseases found in the ICD-10. Just the fact that
there is debate on the how the DSM is written shows that there is passion about the subject as
well as the need for clarity on how to diagnosis, track, reports, and pay for mental health care.
DSM is used by mental/ behavioural health professionals to provide a means of
communicating and recording diagnostic info, as well as research purposes. Whereas ICD is
used to provide billing reference to treatment and diagnostic. The sole purpose of DSM is to
pinpoint mental/behavioural diagnosis for that are not addressed as detailed by healthcare
systems.
DSM contains, descriptions, symptoms, and other criteria for diagnosing disorders. DSM
provides a common language for mental diagnosis that remain reliable and consistent among
providers, just like ICD-10 provides a common language for diagnosis for providers.
Compared to ICD-10 codes, they are not strictly reimbursable by payers. The ICD is produced
by a global health agency with a constitutional public health mission, while the DSM is
produced by a single national professional association. WHO's primary focus for the mental
and behavioural disorders classification is to help countries to reduce the disease burden of
mental disorders.
ICD-10 is a worldwide standard, DSM-V was created by the American Psychiatric
Association. Primarily used among mental and behavioral health providers, DSM-V provides
standard criteria for classifying mental disorders. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services, however, still requires that behavioral health providers use ICD-10 designations to
bill for services.
The important thing to remember is that DSM-V helps clinicians diagnose behavioral health
issues more accurately. In contrast, ICD-10 helps billing staff code and bill more accurately.
Because of these differences, a behavioral health provider’s EHR system should incorporate
both types of coding. DSM contains descriptions, symptoms, and other criteria for diagnosing
mental disorders. It provides a common language for clinicians to communicate about their
patients and establishes consistent and reliable diagnoses that can be used in the research of
mental disorders.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is needed because it helps
people to communicate with people that may have a mental disorder. It also helps to provide a
diagnosis for the symptoms patient's may be facing. It benefits behavioral and mental health
by diagnosing mental health disorders. As for ICD-10, it's used to classify diseases. In a way
both DSM and ICD-10 work together.
DSM is needed to help describe a mental disorder with more specificity. The DSM provides
guidelines, self-rated symptom measures, and allows for factors such as gender, age, and sex
to assist with diagnosing and categorizing the severity of the disorder. According to an article,
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders 5: A quick glance, by Vihang Vahia, the
ability to rate the severity of a patient’s symptoms helps to “grade and chart the course of the
disorder.” The article also states that DSM can be used as a tool to monitor the mental health
of the community. The gathered data can be used by researchers, physicians, and of course the
medical coders with the intent of enhancing the quality of care for patients with mental health
disorders (Vahia, 2013). c
ICD-10 on the other hand is simply used to code the diagnosis for reimbursement; however,
the codes can also be used for trending purposes. Since DSM and ICD-10 are two different
systems, they do not align perfectly. The DSM is used as a diagnosis tool and to help create a
robust description, which can be used to assign the best ICD-10 code (Foley, 2016).
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is needed due to the large amount
of mental health problems and behavioural issues people face today. DSM-5 is the fifth
revision, published by American Psychiatric Association in 2013. Codes from ICD-9 and ICD-
10 are found within DSM-5. Section II of DSM contains ICD-10-CM codes, diagnostic
criteria, and mental disorder descriptive text. Therefore, you can say these coding materials
depend on each other.
Mental health disorders are unique from other medical diseases and, therefore, diagnosing
them can be challenging. Because of this, the American Psychiatric Association (APA)
developed the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM is a
standardized classification of only mental health disorders that assists providers in accurately
diagnosing mental health issues. The current version, DSM-5, lists all mental disorders and
their corresponding ICD-10-CM diagnostic codes. DSM provides the information needed to
accurately code mental health disorders using ICD-10. c Both the DSM and ICD-10 are ways to
classify mental health disorders, but DSM is only used for diagnosing mental health disorders,
while ICD-10 is used for coding all medical conditions.
Unfortunately, there are times when the DSM-5 disorders don’t align with the ICD-10 codes
because “ICD-10-CM was developed while the diagnostic classification in effect was DSM-
IV” (Giannangelo, 2019). c The ICD-11, not currently used in the U.S., will include additional
mental health disorder chapters and better “harmonize the two classifications systems as much
as possible” (Giannangelo, 2019).
Basically, the DSM is just a tool that therapist and other health professionals' use to help
diagnose a mental disorder. They are not used for reimbursement like ICD-10 would be. So,
essentially, they just allow a diagnosis for mental health to be defined. Another difference is
that ICD 10 is a bunch of different diseases and not just mental health. With DSM, there is a
little bit of difference for instance, "dementia, which is noted in DSM-5 as a neurocognitive
disorder, which is not how ICD-10 characterizes dementia" (Boyd). This is an odd example,
normally they are similar for mental disorders. Anyways, back to ICD -10, it is really a guide
for all disease and disorder so that a facility can use it for reimbursement. It is not going to
help you figure out a diagnosis, it just defines the diagnosis by the code you are using. For
instance, you will have I10 and in the book it will just say that is hypertension unspecified.
That is not going to help you diagnose someone with hypertension, it will just give you a code
to use for that. The DSM gives more in-depth detail of mental disorders.
Unlike the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) 10 (and now 11), the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) focuses primarily on psychiatric disorders and
diseases. This means that the DSM is more particular and thorough about its descriptions. So
much so, that after an international mental health conference in 1982 there was worldwide
agreement for the ICD to adopt more explicit diagnostic criteria to define mental disorders that
adhered to what was in the DSM. Since then, the World Health Organization (WHO) has
worked with the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to better align their systems and
work more seamlessly with each other (Regier et al., 2013).
The biggest hurdle for the compatibility of both systems is the fact that the ICD is an
international tool while the DSM is primarily an American one, which can cause issues when
it comes to assessing problems due to cultural differences (Regier et al., 2013). Problems
notwithstanding, the DSMs more in-depth indexing of mental health helps improve the care
that people receive by helping doctors more readily recognize mental disorders when they
appear.
DMS provides common descriptions symptoms about their patients., and the research of
mental disorders. Because of these differences ICD-10 helps billing staff code and bill more
accurately for mental health. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or
DSM is the culmination of 10 years of work by thousands of professionals across the globe to
better understand mental health issues and help to diagnose and treat these issues more
accurately. In this regard, it is needed by mental health advocates and physicians to help
understand the complexities of treating mental health. While ICD-10 helps to accurately
diagnose physical ailments, it has been slightly lacking, however, with the latest revisions in
ICD-11 mental health diagnoses inaccuracies and misunderstandings will soon be a thing of
the past. In the meantime, to bridge the gap in mental health care, DSM has taken the slack.
This Manual serves as a basis for mental health diagnoses and treatment and has helped many
facets of the healthcare industry improve their own understanding of mental healthcare.
“The ICD is produced by a global health agency with a constitutional public health mission,
while the DSM is produced by a single national processional association.” (ICD vs. DSM,
2009)
ICD-10 and DSM are alike in that they are both resources on classifying diseases. c They differ
in that the DSM is specifically designed to classify mental health diseases/disorders and ICD-
10 is all-inclusive of all body systems that require classification. (Foley, 2016)
Although the Surgeon General has closed the gap on the lack of understanding and treatment
of mental health issues, I believe a variety of social concern movements (i.e., “me too”
movement, Black Lives Matter movement), the increase in shooting tragedies and social
chaos, and dealing with the fear and grief over COVID these past three years has brought a
new understanding to mental health issues facing our world today. Raising awareness on such
issues as bullying, racism, sexual harassment, a myriad of addictions, and even hostile work
environments is having a positive effect on the way the healthcare industry has finally started
championing and classifying mental health issues. c The DSM-V provides updated information
focused on mental health issues that allow healthcare professionals diagnose mental health
issues more accurately. ICD-10-CM is then needed for the business side of this information so
it can be coded accurately. c
I believe we have all been smacked up-close and personal by a flash of our own mortality,
compliments of COVID and the current state of chaos the world is in, and it has shocked many
of us into re-evaluating our lives and priorities. Countless people are living in fear of and/or
grief from the catastrophic events of the past few years, so there is an increased need for more
accurate treatment and coding of mental health issues. The negative stigma of mental health is
being diminished by this awareness. The ultimate result is the acknowledgement that mental
health issues affect everyone at some point in life, which makes it less taboo in society.
The quality of life for mental health patients has improved greatly over time and made it
possible for those patients to live normal healthy lives with proper therapy and treatment. The
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders helps clinicians diagnose
behavioral health issues more accurately. The DSM provides a common language towards the
development of treatment addressing complex symptomology. ICD and DSM are different
when it comes to the intent and purpose. ICD is committed to public health whereas the DSM
is specifically focused on mental health conditions. However, they both provide crucial
information for the diagnosis and treatment of physical and mental health disorders.
There have been significant changes made to the DSM which are classified by the type and
range, along with the severity of the symptoms. The DSM offers accurate diagnostic
information for professionals assessing the needs and symptoms of clients. Diagnosis and
treatment can be impacted by differentiating between conditions and symptoms. This is why it
is imperative for providers to have an accurate idea of what the patient is going through so they
can be provided with the proper treatment. There is a lot more to learn about mental health,
and diagnosis will change which results in the revision of the DSM keeping it up to date as
new information is discovered.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders (DSM) is used to help classify
behavioural and mental health diagnosis. There are three sections, the first section consists of
an introduction, use of the manual, and the cautionary statement for forensic use of DSM-5.
Section II is the diagnostic criteria and codes. This section has the information that is used to
support a diagnosis. It also has the ICD-10 codes for mental health diagnosis. However, the
ICD-10 codes are aligned with DSM-IV so some of the codes are not included in DSM-5. The
third section has emerging measures and models. This isn't a requirement for clinical use, but
is helpful as an additional supportive measure for diagnosing, treating, and treatment
monitoring. So, while ICD-10 is useful in billing the DSM-5 is useful in accurately coding by
offering common language and standards to provide assistance in diagnosing.
References
American Psychiatric Association. (n.d.). DSM-5. APA. Retrieved February 24, 2022, from
https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm
Giannangelo, K. (2019). Healthcare Code Sets, Clinical Terminologies, and Classification
Systems: with Access Code (4th ed.). AHIMA.
Understaing the DSM- 5: The Guide to Diagnosing Mental Health Conditions. The Recovery
Village Drug and Alcohol Rehab. Retrieved February 23, 2022, from
https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/mental-health/related/dsm-5/
Foley, D. R. (2016, August 10). DSM-5 vs. ICD-10-CM. Retrieved from AHIMA.ORG:
https://journal.ahima.org/dsm-5-vs-icd-10-cm/
ICD vs. DSM. (2009, October). Retrieved from American Psychological Association:
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/10/icd-dsm
Regier, D. A., Kuhl, E. A., & Kupfer, D. J. (2013). The DSM-5: Classification and criteria
changes. World Psychiatry, 12(2), 92–98. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20050
Boyd, N. (2019, December 9). Diagnostic codes: DSM-5 vs ICD-10. KASA Solutions.
Retrieved February 24, 2022, from https://kasa-solutions.com/diagnostic-codes-dsm-5-vs-icd-
10/
Giannangelo, K., (2019). Healthcare Code Sets, Clinical Terminologies, and Classification
Systems, Fourth Edition. c American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).
ICD vs. DSM October 2009, Vol 40, No. 9
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/10/icd-dsm
DSM-5 vs. ICD-10-CM. Journal Of AHIMA. (2019, December 11). Retrieved February 23,
2022, from https://journal.ahima.org/dsm-5-vs-icd-10-cm/
DSM-5 vs. ICD-10-CM. Journal Of AHIMA. (2019, December 11). Retrieved February 23,
2022, from https://journal.ahima.org/dsm-5-vs-icd-10-cm/
Atayero, S. (2018). The diagnostic system: Why the classification of psychiatric disorders is
necessary, difficult and never settled. Journal of Mental Health, 27(5), 482–482.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2018.1487545
DSM-5 Frequently asked questions. (2022). Retrieved from American Psychiatric
Association: https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm/feedback-and-
questions/frequently-asked-
questions#:~:text=DSM%20contains%20descriptions%2C%20symptoms%2C%20and,the%2
0research%20of%20mental%20disorders.
Baglama, B. (2016). Evaluating the usefulness of DSM in diagnosing mental health problems:
a review of the literature. Global Journal of Psychology Research: New Trends and Issues,
6(1), 46-51.
Key differences between ICD-10 & DSM-5 - outsource2india. Outsource to India. (2021).
Retrieved February 24, 2022, from https://www.outsource2india.com/Healthcare/articles/key-
differences-between-icd-10-dsm-5.asp
Nathan Boyd, (2020) Diagnosed Codes: DSM-5 vs ICD-10
