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Miscoding of Mental Health Diagnoses and Stigmatization
Neal Devitt, MD
La Familia Medical Center Santa Fe, NM
Arch Fam Med. 1995;4(11):917.
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| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings. |
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Until a recent experience with one of my patients, I would have agreed with the Editorial by Broadhead in the April 1994 issue of the ARCHIVES,1 which argued that the efforts by primary care physicians to miscode mental health diagnoses enable the stigmatization of these problems by insurance carriers and other institutions in our society.
The husband of one of my colleagues came to me with a complaint that he thought he was drinking too much. He had a stressful job and found himself more frequently having three bottles of beer at home after work to unwind. He was worried because he had a family history of alcoholism. He told me (as I then recorded in my office notes) that he decided to stop drinking alcohol completely and had begun to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Because he was a friend with whom
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
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