Sexual addiction

Proponents of a diagnostic model for sexual addiction consider it to be one of several sex-related disorders within an umbrella concept known as hypersexual disorder. The term sexual dependence is also used to refer to people who report being unable to control their sexual urges, behaviors, or thoughts. Related or synonymous models of pathological sexual behavior include hypersexuality (nymphomania and satyriasis), erotomania, Don Juanism (or Don Juanitaism), and paraphilia-related disorders. The concept of sexual addiction is contentious. There is considerable debate among psychiatrists, psychologists, sexologists, and other specialists whether compulsive sexual behavior constitutes an addiction, and therefore its classification and possible diagnosis. Animal research has established that compulsive sexual behavior arises from the same transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms that mediate drug addiction in laboratory animals; however, as of 2018, sexual addiction is not a clinical diagnosis in either the DSM or ICD medical classifications of diseases and medical disorders. Some argue that applying such concepts to normal behaviors such as sex, can be problematic, and suggest that applying medical models such as addiction to human sexuality can serve to pathologise normal behavior and cause harm. The ICD-11 created a new condition classification, compulsive sexual behavior, to cover 'a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behaviour'.