A problematic porn use diagnosis is hard to come by. Why? Because many healthcare professionals continue to ignore or be ignorant of the impact of compulsive porn use. This is detrimental to their patients and clients. The World Health Organization’s revised edition of the diagnostic manual, ICD-11 (International Classification of Diseases) is due out later this year. In it, we should see the proposed new diagnostic category of “compulsive sexual behaviour disorder”. The following note by two world leading experts reveals important issues around its classification. They believe it merits being treated as an ‘addictive disorder’ rather than an ‘impulse control disorder’. They also differentiate sex addiction (to people) from porn addiction (compulsive masturbation to screens). Mary Sharpe, CEO of the Reward Foundation is seen here with one of the co-authors, Dr Mateusz Gola, in Cologne at the International Conference on Behavioural Addictions in April this year to discuss the upcoming ICD-11.
Abstract
The letter by Kraus et al. (2018) published recently in World Psychiatry presents diagnostic criteria for compulsive sexual behaviors (CSBs). Here, we discuss the potential impact of including CSB disorder in ICD-11 for four areas: educational efforts related to CSB (for both clinicians and patients), investigation of underlying mechanisms and subtypes, development of personalized treatment frameworks, and answering socially important questions and advancing important prevention efforts and effective policies. Each of these four areas has their own challenges that should be addressed, and we briefly describe and discuss them. We hope that this information will help continue a dialog and provide a framework for moving forward in this area.
