Homosexuality ICD 9 Code

~ Op-Ed by Robin Dorner, Editor-in-Chief ~

Recently I was visiting a friend of mine who had been hospitalized after a heart attack. He has a history of high blood pressure and a few other common problems that many of us experience as we get older.

But my friend has another diagnosis which carries its own ICD-9 code.

Let me add here for those of you who don’t know, an ICD-9 code, as defined by McGraw-Hill, is an, “International Classification of Disease, 9th edition;” that’s a standardized classification of disease system for injuries, and causes of death, by etiology and anatomic localization, which allows clinicians, statisticians, politicians, health planners and others to speak a common language, both US and internationally.

So, this other “disease” my friend has is called, “homosexuality,” and its ICD-9 classification is 302.0. That is a code for mental illness.

As a retired registered nurse of 25 years, I find it shocking that homosexuality is coded into a disease, let alone a mental illness. I never saw that in my practice, but I didn’t work much in the mental health field either.

Who thought this one up? Well, I’ll tell you: WHO. After a little research I realized, this is no new code. It was established in 1977 by the World Health Organization (WHO). The alternative terminology is “Ego Dystonic Sexual Orientation,” and it is, in fact, a mental illness diagnosis.

My friend told me when he saw this diagnosis on his paper he felt discriminated against; less than, unequal to. He said, “Hey Robin, since you were a nurse, what was the code for being straight.” I had no answer for him.

Even Wikipedia indicates that “research has shown that homosexuality is an example of normal variation in human sexuality and is not in and of itself a source of negative psychological effects. Prejudice and discrimination against homosexual and bisexual people, however, have been shown to cause psychological harm.”

Is it time for the medical community to catch up to the 21st century with its coding practices and classifications?

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