From warm Austin, to cool Brighton, via a brief overnight stay in misty Edinburgh, Team TRF participated in the National Organisation for the Treatment of Abusers’ international conference on 28 September 2016. NOTA is an organisation that supports professionals to prevent sexual abuse. Presenting a session entitled, Internet Pornography and Sexual Violence Among Adolescents: A Review of Recent International Research, Darryl Mead and Mary Sharpe were able to share an in-depth piece of research they had carried out earlier this year that reviewed over 160 research papers. With stories, statistics and trending developments, The Reward Foundation was able to demonstrate why brain-based education is so important in demonstrating how chronic overuse of internet pornography can cause mental, physical and social harms across the board. They have been invited to contribute an article about their research review to NOTA News due for publication in either the Winter 2016 or the Spring 2017 edition of the magazine.
Once again Team TRF also took advantage of the presence of academic and clinical leaders in the field use of sexual abuse to film interviews. Experts shared their opinions and experience of the increasing use of internet pornography and its impact on the brains and behaviour of vulnerable individuals.
For instance, how does a doctor or psychologist know if a person with a conviction for possession of child sexual exploitation (CSE) images has a ‘hypersexual disorder’ or a brain changed by conditioning to internet pornography? The former suggests it is an inherent personality trait that he has been born with rendering him vulnerable to compulsive use of CSE porn. The latter suggests the offender would not necessarily have this inherent personality trait but has ‘escalated’ to such illegal material by reason of his having conditioned his brain to need more stimulation or developed an addiction to internet pornography. The person diagnosed with hypersexual disorder may be harder to treat than someone who has developed a pathological form of learning that can be unlearned.
A common feature of any addiction is tolerance, deep habituation to a certain level of stimulation that requires more stimulation to have any effect. With drugs that means higher doses of the drug, with pornography it means wanting new, different, more intense or shocking images to deliver the combined mix of adrenaline and dopamine to give a bigger hit to an otherwise, desensitised, numbed brain. Depression, brain fog, lack of compassion and an inability to cease a behaviour despite negative consequences are all common features of a brain changed by addiction.
Thousands of people have seen the symptoms of their compulsive use remit when they have voluntarily given up using porn. This is why it is important for healthcare professionals to ask first about a patient’s internet pornography habits rather than checking only for an underlying hypersexual disorder as the cause of their mental health problems.
