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From: Ora McCreary
Date: 07 Oct 2010
Time: 01:39:42 -0500
Remote Name: 98.14.249.93
I recently discovered that there's a new diagnostic code for stuttering - 307.0. See "2010 ICD-9-CM Diagnosis Codes - Related to Speech and Hearing Disorders", http://www.asha.org/uploadedFiles/2010ICD9Codes.pdf And http://www.z2systems.com/np/clients/nsa/news.jsp?news=78 . It seems odd that the code is placed within a section that describes "Neurotic Disorders, Personality Disorders, and Other Nonpsychotic Mental Disorders" and "This category is intended for use if the psychopathology is manifested by a single specific symptom or groups of symptoms which is not part of an organic illness or other mental disorder classifiable elsewhere." This category also includes things like masturbation, thumb-sucking, selective mutism. But I thought that it's now generally recognized that developmental stuttering is fundamentally neurologically-based (an organic condition), not psychological, so why would it be placed within a category of psychopathologies? Obviously there may be secondary effects from stuttering which are psychological. But this category appears to be specific to the stuttering itself, not any secondary psychopathologies. Can someone explain the significance of the new categorization? What's been changed? Is there somewhere I can look, or perhaps someone I might ask, to find a substantive discussion of the rationale for this new code, and how it's described and classified? Thanks.