Failure to control urges to have sex has been recognized as a medical disorder for the first time by the World Health Organization.
But health officials stopped short of classifying the illness in the same category as “addictive and substance use disorders,” as WHO recently did with gaming disorder. They are not using the term “sex addiction” to describe the illness, as some advocates have called for, but are calling it “compulsive sexual behavior disorder.”
WHO places the ailment in the same category as “impulse control disorders,” which include other ailments such as kleptomania, when people steal compulsively without motive, and pyromania, when people compulsively set fires.
WHO has added “compulsive sexual behavior disorder” to the International Classification of Diseases, a manual it updates every year. The manual provides codes that insurers use to categorize what ailments to cover, both physical and mental, and guides doctors about which treatments to use.
The new categorization means that countries offering government-funded healthcare could begin to pay for treatment of the disorder.
The manual describes the disorder as “characterized by a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behavior.” It lists symptoms as putting sex at the center of one’s life at the expense of health and personal care, or activities, work and other responsibilities, even after a person receives less satisfaction from sex.
After someone has exhibited this pattern for more than six months, and the behavior results in “marked distress” or “significant impairment” in a person’s life, such as in school, at work, or in relationships, a person should receive treatment, WHO concludes. A person would not meet the criteria of the illness if he or she has moral objections to sex.
Another manual in medicine, known as the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Psychiatric Disorders, excludes “hypersexual behavior disorder.”
