Hypersexuality Disorder to become a mental diagnosis

Do  you spend excessive time in planning and engaging in sex to the point where you are being labeled a philanderer or a scoundrel or a nasty narcissist? You could be suffering from hypersexuality disorder.

Psychiatrists are proposing a medical diagnosis for  hypersexuality disorder to be part of the DSM-5, the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Dr. Martin Kafka, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School who is the primary author of the revisions to the DSM, said proponents hope the DSM listing would open the door to more research that might help people with the disorder.

"If you review the empirical research literature in the last 20 years from a variety of perspectives, it looks at the problem and calls it by different names, but all of these names have a lot in common when describing the same phenomenon," said Kafka.

If approved, hypersexuality disorder will be defined as exhibiting repetitive, intense sexual fantasies, urges and behavior in association with the following criteria in adults:

-- excessive time consumed planning and engaging in sex

-- in response to a dysphoric mood state like anxiety, depression, boredom and irritability

-- in response to stressful life events

-- unsuccessful efforts to control or reduce such urges, disregarding risk for physical or emotional harm to self or others

The behavior must also cause "clinically significant distress or impairment" in a person's daily personal or work life.

"If this problem gets to the point where you are being labeled as a philanderer or a scoundrel or a nasty narcissist, and it happens there is a label of hypersexuality disorder that does validly describe the nature of your behavior, one possibility is reframing the problem and getting medical treatment," Kafka added.

But Dr. Allen Frances, professor emeritus of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University in Durham, N.C., said the proposal is "a really stupid idea" that might lead those who misbehave to cry, 'It's not my fault.'"

"There may be some very small percentage of people who could qualify for addiction to sex, but if it ever became a diagnosis, it would be wildly misapplied," he said.

"Addiction implies that you keep doing it when there is no more pleasure and it causes harm. It becomes an excuse to misbehave."

Frances, who worked on the DSM-4, argues that too many "normal behaviors" have been viewed as illness.

"Medicalizing this sort of misbehavior is reducing personal responsibility and acting like there is a medical solution," he said. "There is very little scientific evidence and the boundaries are fuzzy."

Kafka admits that there is more clinical than scientific data on sexual hyperactivity, but including it as a disorder in the DSM-5 will open doors to that kind of research.

"By calling it an illness, you could be quite relieved that for something you have not really been able to control on your own, help is available," he said.

-Adapted from ABC