Sexual addiction: A diagnosis whose time has come
Current Psychiatry. 2002 July;01(07):29-36
July 1, 2002 | Current Psychiatry
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It’s time to stop viewing compulsive sexual behavior as a moral problem. An addiction model can offer patients new insights, as well as routes to treatment and recovery.
The SAST questionnaire offers a self-report symptom checklist that can be correlated with normative data on sexual addiction. It yields a likelihood that the disorder—rather than the guilt mobilized by the behaviors—should be considered as a focus of treatment.
Treatment
Although treatment of sexual addiction is beyond the scope of this article, the psychiatrist plays an important role:
- Pharmacologic interventions can be appropriate and helpful for symptoms of anxiety and depression that many addicts develop, particularly in withdrawal states.
- Cognitive-behavioral psychotherapeutic approaches can help restructure distorted thinking and alter behavioral patterns.
- Transference-oriented psychodynamic therapies can help modify the basic faulted sense of self and impaired relationships that foster addiction.10
Treatment is also available through 12-step programs such as Sex Addicts Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, and Sexaholics Anonymous (“Related resources”).
- Dodes L. The heart of addiction. New York: Harper Collins, 2002.
- Sex Addicts Anonymous. www.sexaa.org
- Sexaholics Anonymous. www.sa.org
- Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. www.slaafws.org
