Sex addiction: therapist perspectives

Abstract

Sexual addiction may be defined as sexual behaviour that is "compulsive and yet continues despite adverse consequences" (Carnes & Adams, 2013, p5). Knowledge and understanding of sexual addiction has been impaired by the use of multiple labels, definitions, and assessment procedures, hence the present study investigated therapist perspectives and experiences of assessing and treating the condition. Interviews were conducted with nine Psychosexual Therapists and subjected to Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Three superordinate themes emerged from the analysis. These were Distress, Risk, and Treatment. The Distress theme included three subthemes: Stress and Coping; Suicidal Ideation; and Partner Experience. Three subthemes formed the Risk theme: Physical Safety; Disease, Dysfunctions, and Pregnancy; and Co-Addiction. The Treatment theme contained three sub-themes: Awareness; Assessment and Diagnosis; and Successful Therapy. Findings have important implications for the diagnosis and treatment of sexual addiction. Future research should investigate these themes further and introduce interventions to support the safety and well-being of sexual addiction clients.

“Falling Through the Cracks”: A Retrospective Exploration of the Barriers to Help-Seeking Among Men Convicted of Sexual Crimes

“…Nonetheless, we also know that a significant number of non-offending MAPs consider or attempt suicide (B4U-ACT, 2011b). The suicidal thoughts highlighted in the current study coincide with results of other research with MAPs (Cohen et al, 2020; Levenson & Grady, 2019), and therapist accounts of their experiences of working with people exhibiting compulsive sexual behaviors (Brewer & Tidy, 2019).…”

“…It should however also be noted that some participants simply did not seem to consider seeking help, because they did not believe an appropriate service would be available. As we have introduced above, such feelings are not necessarily unfounded, with professionals working with service users in healthcare settings often either being uncomfortable discussing sexual themes (Brewer & Tidy, 2019) or lacking the requisite knowledge of services to refer patients on to (Lievesley et al, 2022).…”

“…However, there is a small collection of studies that explore help-seeking for hypersexual behavior, or ‘sex addiction’ (for reviews of this concept, see Ley, 2012; Phillips et al, 2015), with this being related to increased rates of sexual offending proclivity (Kafka, 2003; Slavin et al, 2020). In one qualitative analysis of the perceptions of therapists, sex addiction was reported to be commonly associated with suicidal ideation and high levels of stress, which often exacerbated the problems associated with sexualized coping (Brewer & Tidy, 2019). However, help-seeking efforts were often hampered by a lack of comfort among healthcare professionals to work with sexual behavior issues, and a lack of awareness of available services to refer to among those who do probe about service users’ sexual issues.…”

Content development and initial psychometric analysis of the problematic hypersexuality scale

“…To account for the absence of transgender identities in the U.S. census data, the researchers used the estimate of 0.3% to 0.5% adults in the United States identifying as transgender (Conron et al., 2012; Reisner et al., 2014), as the target for the development sample. The researchers chose to stratify the sample based on gender because of the lack of representation of gender minorities (i.e., female, transgender) in the majority of PH research and pre‐existing measures (Brewer & Tidy, 2017; Briggs et al., 2017; Efrati & Gola, 2018). Participants were able to select to participate in the study through a list of available HITs on the MTurk platform, and participants were compensated $0.30 through the MTurk platform upon completion of the study.…”

Sex addiction 101: Empirical support, treatment considerations, and future directions

“…This may entail simultaneous addictive behaviors, such as sex and substances. Indeed, psychosexual counselors have observed this overlap in their clients, namely, sex addiction coupled with addiction to alcohol and other substances (Brewer & Tidy, 2019).…”