Sign Up
Login
Try for Free
Login
The WHODAS 2.0 (World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0) is WHO's ICF-based measure of functioning and disability over the past 30 days, in 36-item and 12-item versions, self-, proxy-, or interviewer-administered. Psychiatrists, psychologists, and disability evaluators use it as the DSM-5 Section III functioning measure and as evidence in SSA, VA, 1915(i), and NDIS files. This page covers how to document WHODAS 2.0 results, with a fictional sample note.
Adult self-report, a proxy informant, or an interviewer-administered version; scored and interpreted by psychiatrists, psychologists, occupational therapists, social workers, and other clinicians; no publisher qualification level, WHO asks users to register, and some programs require administration training
Psychiatrists and psychologists, treatment teams reviewing plans, SSA and VA adjudicators, disability and workers' compensation evaluators, NDIS planners and delegates, state Medicaid 1915(i) reviewers, MIPS abstractors, payers and auditors
4 to 10 chart lines (version, mode, recall window, scoring method and coding, total, domain profile, percentile, linkage) · completion about 5 minutes for the 12-item and about 20 minutes for the 36-item version
Self-, proxy-, or interviewer-administered functioning and disability measure (36 or 12 items across six ICF domains, five-level difficulty scale, 30-day recall; simple sum or WHO complex scoring on a 0 to 100 metric)
Psychiatric diagnostic evaluations, treatment plan reviews and outcome measurement, disability and workers' compensation evaluations, NDIS functional capacity and progress reports, 1915(i) needs-based eligibility, fitness-for-duty and capacity evaluations
World Health Organization (manual 2010, Üstün and colleagues); WHO copyright, free clinical use with registration, licensing required for electronic or EHR use; DSM-5 Section III emerging measure; required by no federal law; described here for documentation, no items reproduced
The World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 is WHO's generic measure of functioning and disability, built from the activity and participation components of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) through the WHO/NIH Joint Project, tested in 19 countries with more than 65,000 respondents, and published in the manual Measuring Health and Disability (Üstün, Kostanjsek, Chatterji, and Rehm, editors; WHO, 2010). It asks how much difficulty a person had, because of a health condition of any kind, over the past 30 days in six domains: cognition (understanding and communicating), mobility (moving and getting around), self-care (hygiene, dressing, eating, being alone), getting along (interacting with other people), life activities (household responsibilities and, where applicable, work or school), and participation (joining in community activities and the wider effects of the condition). Each item is rated on five levels from no difficulty to extreme difficulty or cannot do. The manual holds seven versions: a 36-item form that yields an overall score and six domain scores (about 20 minutes by interview) and a 12-item form for brief overall assessment (about 5 minutes; it explains 81 percent of the variance of the 36-item form), each in self-administered, interviewer-administered, and proxy-administered versions, plus a 12+24 interviewer hybrid that screens with the short set and adds the fuller items where difficulty is reported. WHO describes WHODAS 2.0 as an altogether different instrument from the earlier WHODAS II, which it supersedes.
The load-bearing fact for documentation is that a WHODAS number has no identity of its own. WHO recognizes two scoring methods: simple scoring, an unweighted sum of the item responses, which the manual calls sufficient for busy clinical settings, and complex scoring, an item response theory method run through WHO's own template that weights items and levels and converts the result to a 0 to 100 metric, 0 meaning no disability and 100 full disability. The two are highly correlated (0.99 in a Swedish psychiatric sample) but produce different numbers. WHO's current templates also code the five responses 0 to 4 where the older manual text and the DSM-5 reproduction coded them 1 to 5, and WHO warns that the words did not change but the numbers did, so a raw sum is ambiguous until the coding is stated. And WHO publishes general-population norms and percentiles, not clinical cutoffs: none, mild, moderate, severe, and extreme are item-level response labels, not bands for the total, and CMS's 2026 specification for MIPS measure 502 states, "There is no recommended cutoff score." DSM-5 (2013) dropped the GAF and placed the 36-item self-administered WHODAS 2.0 in Section III as an emerging measure for further study, not as a mandated replacement, and DSM-5-TR (2022) kept it there; the retired scale it stands beside is covered on the GAF score page, and no conversion between the two exists. The diagnostic frame around the entry belongs to the psychiatric diagnostic evaluation; the goals it informs belong to the treatment plan and its reviews.
Psychiatrists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, and psychologists chart it in a psychiatric diagnostic evaluation as the DSM-5 Section III functioning measure, then repeat it at treatment plan reviews as an outcome measure under the conventions of the outcome measure note; US clinicians reporting MIPS measure 502 use the 12-item version for exactly that. Occupational therapists, psychologists, and social workers in Australia embed the 36-item version in an NDIS functional capacity assessment or an NDIS progress report, beside the LSP-16 and HoNOS. Disability, workers' compensation, and forensic evaluators cite it as corroborating self-report in a medical source statement, a workers' compensation report, or a fitness-for-duty evaluation; state Medicaid 1915(i) programs such as North Dakota's and Michigan's administer the 36-item version for needs-based eligibility; VA clinicians and researchers use it in general mental health clinics. Neighbors win in three places: the GAF when a legacy form demands an Axis V number (entered beside, never converted from, the WHODAS), the HoNOS or LSP-16 when an Australian service needs its clinician-rated national measures, and a direct observational assessment of daily tasks when a decision turns on performance rather than reported difficulty. The mental status exam carries the observed symptom picture the WHODAS does not.
No law, payer, or WHO rule prescribes a WHODAS 2.0 note format; WHO publishes the instrument, its templates, and population norms, and the systems that use the score set their own version, method, and threshold rules. What survives review is an entry that names the version and how the work items were handled, the respondent and mode, the recall window and completeness, the scoring method and response coding, the domain profile, an interpretation that uses percentiles rather than a WHO-attributed severity band and ties the pattern to diagnosis and plan, and the decision context and repeat plan. Each element below carries the pitfall that most often undermines it.
Version, item count, and work items. Write the exact configuration: "WHODAS 2.0, 36-item, self-administered version" or "12-item, interviewer-administered," and the language and translation (WHO distributes partner translations without warranting their quality, so name the one used). State whether the work or school items applied: for a respondent not in paid work or school, the manual's pathway omits those items and scores the remaining 32, and the note should say "32-item scoring, respondent not working" rather than leaving the work items at no difficulty. If the 12+24 hybrid was used, name it; if a program mandates a configuration (North Dakota's 1915(i) benefit requires the 36-item interviewer version), cite the rule. Pitfall: "WHODAS 45" with no version, a 12-item total trended against a 36-item baseline, or an unemployed respondent's work items scored as no difficulty, which erases the vocational limitation the evaluation exists to describe.
Respondent and administration mode. Record who completed it and how: self-administered on paper or a licensed electronic form, interviewer-administered in person or by telephone, or proxy-administered, with the proxy's relationship and the reason (impaired capacity, communication, or the program's request). A proxy result is a third party's view of the person's functioning, and agreement with self-report is better for observable domains such as mobility and self-care than for cognition and getting along, so chart it as a proxy report and keep it separate from any self-report on file. Note reading, language, sensory, or capacity limits that shaped the administration. Pitfall: A proxy score charted as the patient's own report, or "WHODAS completed" with no respondent named, so a later reader cannot tell whose account the number is.
Recall window and completeness. Every version asks about the past 30 days. Write the window as dates ("the 30 days ending 09/15/2026") and say whether the month was typical: a result that covers an admission, a bereavement, a holiday, or a period off work is valid for that month and a poor baseline. State that all items were answered or which were missing, and whether the manual's limited imputation rule for a missing item or two was applied; a total computed with silently dropped items is not comparable with anything. Pitfall: A result that silently covers a hospital stay, or a total with missing items dropped without saying so.
Scoring method and response coding. Name the method: simple scoring (an unweighted sum of the item responses, which the manual calls sufficient to describe the degree of functional limitation) or complex scoring (WHO's item response theory template, which weights items and levels and converts to the 0 to 100 metric). Then name the coding: WHO's current templates assign the five responses 0 to 4; the older manual text and the DSM-5 reproduction assigned 1 to 5, and WHO warns that the words did not change but the numbers did. Report the raw total with its maximum ("62 of 144 on 0 to 4 coding"), and the 0 to 100 summary only when WHO's template produced it; a raw sum expressed as a percentage is neither. If a program specifies a method (North Dakota's 1915(i) benefit requires the complex score), follow and cite it. Pitfall: A raw sum reported as a percentage or as a "complex score," or a 1 to 5 total from an old form compared with a 0 to 4 total from a new template as if 36 points of coding drift were improvement.
Domain profile. For the 36-item version, report the six domain results beside the total and say which domains drive it and which sit near the floor: a psychiatric profile typically loads on cognition, getting along, life activities, and participation with mobility and self-care preserved, while a physical profile loads the reverse, and identical totals can hide opposite patterns. The 12-item version yields one overall score only, so do not read domain scores from it. Programs that use the profile for planning (1915(i) care plans, NDIS reports) need the domain results, not just the total. Pitfall: A total with no profile, so a mobility-driven and a cognition-driven 62 look identical, or domain scores reported from a 12-item administration.
Interpretation: percentiles, not a WHO cutoff. Write that higher scores mean more reported difficulty, then locate the result against WHO's general-population norms in the manual if a percentile is useful, naming the norm source; do not attach a mild, moderate, or severe label to the total as if WHO defined it, because WHO defines none for the summary score and any band you use must be attributed to its actual source (a study, a program rule, or a local convention). Tie the pattern to the diagnosis as consistent with, not diagnostic of: the WHODAS is diagnosis-neutral and captures difficulty from any cause, so name other contributors (physical illness, environment) or their absence, and record congruence with the interview, the mental status exam, and collateral. Pitfall: "WHODAS 45, moderate disability" attributed to WHO, or the score offered as proof of a diagnosis or of disability.
Decision context and repeat plan. Name the system the result will travel to (SSA, VA, workers' compensation, NDIS, a 1915(i) benefit, a payer, or a fitness-for-duty referral) and translate the findings into that system's own functional areas in prose, never as a crosswalk table, stating that self-report corroborates and does not establish eligibility, capacity, or causation; the sentence "WHODAS 58, therefore disabled" reserves a conclusion that belongs to the adjudicator. Link the profile to the treatment or support plan, then set the repeat: same version, mode, method, and coding, at the interval the purpose sets (MIPS measure 502 requires a follow-up 30 to 180 days after the index assessment), with change described in the profile rather than labelled clinically significant, because no single minimal important difference is established. Pitfall: "WHODAS 58, therefore disabled," or a follow-up on a different version, mode, or coding read as change.
WHODAS 2.0 DOCUMENTATION BLOCK Date: [ ] Setting: [ ] Clinician: [ ] Encounter: [diagnostic evaluation / treatment plan review / disability or NDIS report / outcome measurement] Version: [36-item / 12-item / 12+24 interviewer] Language + translation: [ ] Work or school items: [administered / not applicable: 32-item scoring used] Mode + respondent: [self / interviewer (in person, telephone) / proxy: relationship and reason] Reading, language, or capacity limits: [ ] Recall window: [the 30 days ending mm/dd/yyyy; typical or atypical month] Completeness: [all items answered / missing items and imputation applied or not] Scoring: [simple sum / WHO complex (IRT) template] Coding: [0 to 4 / 1 to 5] Total: [ ] of [maximum] 0 to 100 summary (if produced): [ ] Percentile (if used): [ ] Norm source: [WHO manual general population] Domain profile (36-item only): cognition [ ] mobility [ ] self-care [ ] getting along [ ] life activities: household [ ] work or school [ ] participation [ ] Driving domains: [ ] Near floor: [ ] Interpretation: [higher = more reported difficulty; no WHO cutoff or severity band; pattern consistent with, not diagnostic of, ...; other contributors: physical, environmental, or none; congruence with interview and collateral] Decision context: [SSA / VA / workers' compensation / NDIS / 1915(i) / payer / fitness for duty: findings translated into that system's own areas; self-report corroborates, does not establish eligibility or capacity] Prior results: [date, version, mode, method, coding; same-version change only; 12-item and 36-item not compared] Plan: [goals the profile supports / repeat: same version, mode, method, coding; interval (MIPS 502: 30 to 180 days) / where stored] Clinician signature / credentials: Date:
Free to use and share, no signup. The PDF includes a one-page cheat sheet with element-by-element pitfalls and a pre-sign checklist; the DOCX is the blank documentation block, ready to adapt. Neither reproduces the instrument items, response scale, norms, or scoring templates.
Scenario: a US outpatient psychiatric diagnostic evaluation for an employed adult with recurrent major depressive disorder, where the psychiatrist documents a 36-item self-administered WHODAS 2.0 as the functioning measure, keeps a 12-item primary care result separate, ties the profile to the treatment plan, and fixes the repeat for the 90-day treatment plan review. All details are fictional.
Patient: J.M., 37 · Setting: Outpatient psychiatry clinic, psychiatric diagnostic evaluation (intake) · Clinician: L. Ferreira, MD · Note date: 09/15/2026
Measure and administration: WHODAS 2.0, 36-item, self-administered version, English, completed on paper in the waiting room on 09/15/2026 before the diagnostic interview. J.M. works full time as a logistics coordinator, so the work items applied and all 36 items were scored (no 32-item pathway); all items answered, no imputation. Recall window: the 30 days ending 09/15/2026, which he describes as typical of the past three months, with no admission, leave, or bereavement. Scored by hand as a simple sum on the 0 to 4 response coding of WHO's current templates; WHO's complex (IRT) template was not run and no 0 to 100 summary is reported.
Results: Total 62 of 144. Domain results, each the sum of that domain's item responses with the domain maximum in parentheses: cognition 14 (24), mobility 3 (20), self-care 2 (16), getting along 12 (20), life activities 18 (32), of which household 8 (16) and work 10 (16), participation 13 (32). Difficulty is concentrated in cognition, getting along, and the work portion of life activities, with participation elevated and mobility and self-care near the floor. Read against the general-population percentile table in the WHO manual, the total sits in the upper tail of the reference distribution, above the 90th percentile; no severity label is attached, because WHO defines none for the summary score. A 12-item WHODAS 2.0 completed at the primary care referral visit on 09/02/2026 is recorded separately in the referral documentation and is not compared with this result: different version, no domain scores.
Interpretation: The pattern (cognitive, interpersonal, and work-role difficulty with preserved mobility and self-care) is consistent with, not diagnostic of, the recurrent major depressive episode documented in the diagnostic formulation above, and it matches his account of trouble concentrating and following conversations at work, withdrawal from colleagues and family, missed deadlines, and two absences this month. The WHODAS measures reported difficulty from any cause; J.M. has no physical condition that would load the mobility or self-care domains, and none is contributing here. Congruent with today's interview and mental status exam and with his partner's collateral account by telephone. The measure does not by itself establish diagnosis, work capacity, or disability.
Linkage to plan: The profile is the functional baseline for the treatment plan dated 09/15/2026: goals target sustained concentration on work tasks, re-engagement with two social contacts each week, and restoration of the household routine, with the psychotherapy and medication interventions recorded in the plan itself. No disability, leave, or accommodation request is pending. If one arises, the WHODAS will be presented as corroborating self-report beside the interview, records, and collateral, translated into that system's own functional areas, and never as a conclusion about eligibility.
Repeat and record: Repeat the 36-item self-administered version, same paper form, 0 to 4 coding, simple scoring, at the 90-day treatment plan review in early December; describe change in the domain profile rather than labelling it clinically significant, since no single minimal important difference is established for this population. Result entered in the outcome-measure record with version, mode, recall window, method, coding, total, and domain sums; the completed paper form is filed in the chart, and no GAF is entered because no form in this record requires one. J.M. was told the number describes his own report of difficulty over the past month and is not a diagnosis or a disability rating.
This sample is fictional and for educational purposes. It does not describe a real patient or record; the scores, dates, and details are invented to show documentation structure and are not clinical guidance. No instrument items, norms, or scoring materials are reproduced.
Writing these after every session? BastionGPT drafts complete notes from bullets, dictation, or a transcript.
Generate a note from bulletsUnited States: the authority map is layered, and none of it makes the WHODAS a decision rule. Under LAW, the Social Security Administration rates adult mental impairments on its own four functional areas (understanding, remembering, and applying information; interacting with others; concentrating, persisting, and maintaining pace; adapting and managing oneself) with its own limitation scale under Listing 12.00, and no SSA rule names the WHODAS or attaches a disability threshold to its score; the National Academies' 2015 report for SSA on psychological testing described self-report measures as corroborating symptoms rather than providing direct evidence of functional capacity, which is the frame a WHODAS should carry into a medical source statement (CONVENTION). Also under LAW, 38 CFR 4.126 directs VA rating agencies to base a mental-disorder evaluation on all the evidence of record bearing on occupational and social impairment rather than solely on an examiner's assessment at the moment of examination, so a WHODAS in a VA file is one strand of that record; peer-reviewed VA work uses it as an adjunct in general mental health clinics (CONVENTION), and the GAF the VA dropped from its examinations in 2014 does not convert to it. Under PAYER POLICY, CMS's 2026 MIPS quality measure 502 (Improvement or Maintenance of Functioning for Individuals with a Mental and/or Substance Use Disorder) accepts the 12-item WHODAS 2.0 or the Sheehan Disability Scale for patients 18 and older, requires a follow-up 30 to 180 days after the index assessment, defines improvement as any positive change in score and maintenance as no change, and states that there is no recommended cutoff score. State Medicaid 1915(i) benefits go further: North Dakota's needs-based eligibility policy (updated April 2026) requires the 36-item version with WHO's complex scoring, a complex score of 25 or higher (or a DLA-20 score of 5 or lower), trained administrators, and face-to-face administration even though the instrument itself does not require it, and Michigan uses the 36-item WHODAS 2.0 to support 1915(i) eligibility and Habilitation Supports Waiver screening in place of the Supports Intensity Scale (PAYER POLICY, state by state). Those program rules set the version, method, and threshold inside the program; outside them the number carries no threshold. State workers' compensation systems rate psychiatric impairment under their own schedules, none of which adopts the WHODAS as the rating instrument (LAW, state by state), and in fitness-for-duty and capacity evaluations it is corroborating self-report beside the interview, records, collateral, and any validity testing (CONVENTION).
Canada and Australia accept it as evidence and require it nowhere. In Canada, the Ontario Disability Support Program determines disability from its own package, a mandatory Health Status Report and Activities of Daily Living Index completed by listed health professionals, to which functional assessments and specialist reports may be attached (PAYER POLICY, provincial); no provincial disability program reviewed for this page names the WHODAS, so a Canadian WHODAS is supplementary functional evidence, and the 12-item Canadian population study by Sjonnesen and colleagues (23,757 respondents; mean scores from 14.2 in the community to 23.1 in schizophrenia) is the reference most often cited beside it (CONVENTION). In Australia, the NDIS Act's access test asks for substantially reduced functional capacity in one or more of six areas (communication, social interaction, learning, mobility, self-care, self-management) (LAW); the NDIA's psychosocial disability guidance lists the LSP-16, HoNOS, and WHODAS as functional-assessment evidence, calls its Evidence of Psychosocial Disability form preferred but not compulsory, and states that those tools may not provide enough evidence on their own and are considered alongside a treating health professional's information and carer or support-worker statements (PAYER POLICY); RANZCP's guidance for psychiatrists (updated March 2025) lists the accepted tools in order as HoNOS, LSP-16, and WHODAS 2.0 for ages 17 and over, so the WHODAS sits inside the NDIS functional capacity assessment and the NDIS progress report rather than replacing either (CONVENTION). Reform is live: the Getting the NDIS Back on Track Act received assent on September 5, 2024, and on August 31, 2026 the Commonwealth opened a consultation, closing October 2, 2026, on how functional capacity should be assessed and what evidence should support access decisions, with a Technical Advisory Group advising, so an NDIS report written in late 2026 should note that the evidentiary framework is changing. On versions and norms: the 36-item and 12-item forms are not interchangeable (the short form explains 81 percent of the long form's variance and yields no domain profile), the 12+24 interviewer hybrid is a third configuration, the 2010 manual's general-population norms are the only WHO reference distribution, and WHO's own templates now code responses 0 to 4 where older materials, including the DSM-5 reproduction, used 1 to 5, so the coding is part of the record. The instrument carries no publisher qualification level: WHO asks users to register, the adult forms are for ages 18 and over (the WHODAS-Child is a separate research instrument, and a Canadian population study found the 12-item adult form valid for comparisons down to age 15 as a research finding, not a change of scope), and programs such as North Dakota's require completed administration training for the interviewer version.
The WHODAS 2.0 is copyrighted by the World Health Organization and made available free of charge for clinical use on WHO's terms: the 2010 manual describes the standard instrument as in the public domain subject to completing WHO's online registration form and making no substantive changes without permission; the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 and DSM-5-TR reproductions, published with WHO's permission, state that clinicians may reproduce the material without permission for use with their own patients and that any other use, including electronic use, requires written permission from WHO; and WHO's WHODAS 2.0 page (accessed September 2026) directs anyone including the instrument in an electronic records or data capture system, or reproducing it in any way, to WHO's licensing process, under a permissions policy that requires permission for commercial uses. Paper use with your own patients is covered; an EHR build, an app, a public web scorer, or a paid product is not until WHO says so. BastionGPT is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the publisher. This page reproduces no test items, stimuli, norms, or scoring materials.
The numbers behind these errors are specific. In WHO's development work across 19 countries and more than 65,000 respondents, the 36-item total showed internal consistency of 0.86 and test-retest reliability of 0.98 (Üstün and colleagues, 2010); the 2026 systematic review of 143 studies in 43 countries found a mean alpha of 0.92 for the 36-item and 0.88 for the 12-item form, test-retest values of about 0.89 to 0.91, support for the six-domain structure in 74 percent of 36-item analyses but only 59 percent of 12-item analyses, and two unresolved scoring issues, inconsistent procedures between the manual's SPSS algorithm and WHO's Excel template and unclear handling of not-applicable responses (Federici and colleagues, 2026). Simple and complex person measures correlated 0.99 in 780 Swedish psychiatric outpatients, yet the same study found domain-level reliability problems and one misfitting item in the getting-along domain (Svanborg and colleagues, 2022). A 2023 systematic review found self and proxy ratings agree better in observable physical domains than in emotional ones (Hernández and colleagues). No single minimal important difference is established (Federici and colleagues, 2017); estimates run from about 3 points in depression and anxiety (Abdin and colleagues, 2025) to 4.87 points after low back pain rehabilitation (Ćwirlej-Sozańska and colleagues, 2020). No published audit counts how often a chart entry omits the version, mode, method, or coding; the program rules described under compliance considerations are what turn those omissions into an eligibility or weight problem. The BastionGPT Clinical Advisory Board sees the same errors most often in WHODAS 2.0 documentation reviews:
BastionGPT is specifically trained, tuned, and clinically tested on psychiatric diagnostic evaluations and treatment plan reviews.
See how clinicians use it day to day on the AI therapy notes page.
Many BastionGPT users report saving more than 90 minutes per day on documentation.
HIPAA-compliant with a signed BAA on every plan. Your data is never used to train models. BastionGPT drafts, you review and sign.
Higher means more reported difficulty over the past 30 days; that is all a bare number says. A simple score is an unweighted sum of the item responses, so its maximum depends on the version and the coding (0 to 4 on WHO's current templates, 1 to 5 in older materials); a complex score is WHO's item response theory result on a 0 to 100 metric, where 0 is no disability and 100 full disability. WHO gives no clinical cutoff and no severity bands for the total: the manual interprets scores against general-population norms and percentiles, and the none-to-extreme words belong to the item response scale, not to the summary score. CMS's 2026 MIPS specification for measure 502 says the same: there is no recommended cutoff score. Where a threshold exists it is a program's rule (North Dakota's 1915(i) benefit uses a complex score of 25 or higher), and the note should cite that program, not WHO. The interpretable unit is the version, the method and coding, the total, the domain profile, and the percentile if one is used.
Choose by what the reader needs. The 36-item version yields an overall score and six domain scores, takes about 20 minutes by interview, and is the DSM-5 Section III form and the version state 1915(i) programs and most NDIS reports rely on, because the domain profile does the work. The 12-item version takes about 5 minutes, explains 81 percent of the variance of the long form, and yields one overall score; it suits brief outcome tracking and is the version MIPS measure 502 accepts. They are not interchangeable: a 12-item total cannot be trended against a 36-item baseline, the 2026 systematic review found weaker support for the six-domain structure in the short form, and no domain profile can be read from it. The 12+24 interviewer hybrid screens with the short set and adds the fuller items where difficulty is reported; name it if you use it. Whatever you choose, keep it constant for repeat administrations, and describe serial results under the conventions of the outcome measure note.
Both are WHO-recognized. Simple scoring adds the item responses without weighting; the manual describes it as practical for hand scoring and sufficient to describe the degree of functional limitation. Complex scoring runs the responses through WHO's item response theory template, which weights items and difficulty levels and converts the result to 0 to 100; it is the method for population comparison and the one some programs mandate. The two rank people almost identically (a 0.99 correlation in 780 Swedish psychiatric outpatients) but are different numbers, and the 2026 systematic review found the manual's SPSS algorithm and WHO's Excel template do not describe identical procedures, so name the method and, for complex scoring, the template used. Coding matters because WHO changed the numbers assigned to the unchanged response words from 1 to 5 to 0 to 4: on the 36-item form the same answers sum 36 points higher under the old coding, so an undocumented raw total from an old form and one from a new template cannot be compared, and a percentage computed from a raw sum is neither WHO score. Write the method and the coding every time.
DSM-5 removed the GAF and the multiaxial system in 2013 and placed the 36-item self-administered WHODAS 2.0 in Section III, the chapter for emerging measures needing further study, as the suggested functioning measure; DSM-5-TR (2022) kept it there. That is a recommendation, not a mandate, and no national uptake figure exists, so write that DSM-5 introduced the WHODAS 2.0 as its standardized disability measure, not that it replaced the GAF in practice; some payer, state, and VA forms still carry a GAF field. The two are conceptually different: the GAF is a clinician's single 1 to 100 judgment blending symptom severity with functioning over a short current period for mental illness only, and the WHODAS is a respondent- or informant-based, diagnosis-neutral, domain-structured measure of difficulty from any cause over 30 days. No validated conversion exists, so never derive one from the other; when a form demands a GAF, enter it under its own frame as the GAF score page describes, record the WHODAS separately with its version and method, and state that no conversion was made.
No authority requires it, and no score proves anything by itself. SSA rates mental impairments on its own four functional areas with its own limitation scale (LAW) and names no instrument; the National Academies' 2015 report for SSA describes self-report measures as corroborating symptoms rather than as direct evidence of functional capacity, so present the WHODAS in a medical source statement as corroboration and translate the findings into SSA's areas in prose. The VA's rating rule, 38 CFR 4.126, requires an evaluation based on all the evidence of occupational and social impairment rather than an examiner's snapshot (LAW), which makes a WHODAS one strand of the record. Workers' compensation impairment is rated under state schedules, not the WHODAS (LAW, state by state). The NDIS access test asks for substantially reduced functional capacity in one or more of six statutory areas (LAW), and the NDIA lists the WHODAS with the LSP-16 and HoNOS as accepted functional evidence while stating those tools may not provide enough evidence on their own (PAYER POLICY); the NDIS functional capacity assessment page covers the report the WHODAS sits inside. The exceptions run the other way: programs such as North Dakota's 1915(i) benefit set a WHODAS threshold as one needs-based criterion, and CMS's MIPS measure 502 accepts the 12-item version for outcome reporting (PAYER POLICY). Everywhere else the number corroborates; the decision-maker decides.
Yes, with the proxy-administered version, which WHO publishes for a family member, carer, or other observer to report on the person's functioning, and which the APA form points to when an adult cannot complete the self-report. Chart it as a proxy report: name the proxy's relationship, the reason proxy administration was used, and whether the person was present, and keep it separate from any self-report on file rather than blending the two. Agreement between self and proxy ratings is generally good but better for observable domains (mobility, self-care) than for cognition, getting along, and emotional experience, and in youth samples parents have rated less difficulty than the young people themselves, so a proxy profile can understate the domains that matter most in psychiatric evaluation. Some programs set the format: North Dakota's 1915(i) policy allows a face-to-face proxy assessment with the applicant's representative. Repeat administrations should use the same respondent; a proxy baseline and a self-report follow-up are not a change score.
Do not score them as no difficulty. The manual's pathway for a respondent who is not in paid work or school omits the work and school items and scores the remaining 32, and the manual describes the 32-item result as comparable with the 36-item score. Document it: "Work and school items not administered; respondent not working during the reference period; 32-item scoring used," and state whether the absence of work is itself clinically relevant, because leaving those items at zero produces an artificially favorable profile that hides the vocational limitation a disability or NDIS evaluation exists to describe. Keep the same treatment at follow-up so a return to work does not masquerade as a change in scoring; if the person has since started work, say that the 36-item and 32-item results are not directly comparable and describe the change in the other domains. The 2026 systematic review flagged handling of not-applicable responses as an unresolved point in WHO's instructions, which is one more reason to write down exactly what you did.
Not without WHO's licensing. The layers are precise. WHO's 2010 manual describes the instrument as in the public domain in the sense of free access after completing WHO's online registration, with no substantive changes permitted without WHO's approval. The APA reproductions in DSM-5 and DSM-5-TR, published with WHO's permission, state that clinicians may reproduce the material without permission for use with their own patients and that any other use, including electronic use, requires written permission from WHO. And WHO's WHODAS 2.0 page, checked September 2026, directs anyone including the instrument in an electronic records or data capture system, or reproducing it in any way, to WHO's classifications licensing, under a permissions policy that requires permission for commercial uses. So a paper form used with your own patients is covered; an EHR build, a patient portal questionnaire, a public web scorer, or an app is an electronic use that needs WHO's written permission or license first, whether or not it is free, and vendor pages claiming that no permission is required are wrong as a blanket statement. This page and its templates stay on the right side of that line: structure in words, no items, no norms, no scoring template.
Yes. Give it the facts (version and item count, who completed it and how, the recall window and dates, completeness, scoring method and coding, the total and domain results, the percentile if used, the diagnosis, the decision context, and any prior administration) and it drafts the full entry: configuration named, domain profile described, interpretation kept to percentiles and consistent-with language, the system translation in prose, and the repeat plan, ready for your review. It can also check a finished note for a bare number with no version or method, a WHO-attributed severity band, a 12-item result trended against a 36-item baseline, work items scored as no difficulty for a non-working respondent, a proxy report charted as self-report, or a score presented as eligibility or converted to a GAF. BastionGPT is HIPAA-compliant with a signed BAA on every plan, and your data is never used to train models.
The instrument facts and compliance claims on this page trace to these sources, last verified September 2026:
Educational content, not legal or billing advice. Sample notes are fictional. Follow your organization's policies and your board, payer, and jurisdiction requirements.