ABSTRACT

The Sexual Compulsivity Scale was designed to serve as a brief psychometric instrument to assist in the assessment of insistent, intrusive, and uncontrolled sexual thoughts and behaviors. Sexual compulsivity is conceptually and clinically similar to sexual addiction. Demonstrating discriminant validity, patients who seek help for hypersexuality score more than a standard deviation higher on the Sexual Compulsivity Scale than nonclinical samples. Hypersexual disorder (HD) was a proposed construct to be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as a non-paraphilic sexual disorder for the clinical diagnosis of excessive sexual thoughts and behaviors accompanied by clinically significant distress. As a theoretical framework, the well-established addiction components model was applied to assess sex addiction. Sex addiction problems were also more prevalent among men than women, and more prevalent among those who were single, of younger age, and with higher education.