YNOT – After years in medical and legal limbo as the unofficial excuse for everything from celebrity divorces to clerical shame, so-called sex addiction soon may get official recognition.

Scientists studying the psychological profiles of people who claim to be sex addicts have compiled a list of common symptoms that have the mental health community considering the alleged disorder for inclusion in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The DSM is the bible of psychiatrists and psychologists.

Under one proposed definition, a person who simply has frequent sex would not be diagnosed as a sex addict, according to Rory Reid, an assistant professor and research psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. However, people whose sexual activities are excessive, frequently used to cope with stress and interfere with their ability to function in daily life may meet the criteria for diagnosis as a sex addict.

Reid stressed that only relentless, out-of-control sexual urges would qualify an individual as a candidate for sex-addiction diagnosis, which researchers have re-framed as hypersexual disorder. Neither frequent sexual activity nor an attachment to pornography, by itself or in combination, would mark a person as a potential sex addict, he averred.

According to Reid, a person suffering hypersexual disorder

• Experiences recurrent and intense sexual fantasies, sexual urges and sexual behavior lasting at least six months.
• Seeks excessive amounts of sex, frequently as a means of coping with stress.
• Allows sex to interfere with the ability to perform a job or maintain social and/or familial relationships.
• Displays a genuine inability to control sexual urges, even in situations where the urges might cause significant problems or harm such as job loss, relationship problems or financial difficulties.

In addition, the sexual fantasies, urges and behaviors must not be brought on by drugs, alcohol or another mental disorder.

Reid’s recent study of 200 subjects referred to his UCLA research clinic used the above criteria for diagnosis. Without conferring with each other, individual researchers agreed on a diagnosis of hypersexual disorder for 134 of the subjects. The remainder were determined to suffer from some other primary ailment, such as substance abuse, for which hypersexual behavior was a side-effect.

The study’s results were published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine and submitted to the American Psychiatric Association, which compiles and publishes the DSM. The next edition of the manual is due in May 2013.

Reid indicated the chief benefit of classifying hypersexual behavior as a bona-fide disorder would be in enabling so-called sex addicts to seek treatment, much as alcoholics and drug addicts are able to obtain care. As with substance abuse, however, the disorder most likely would not excuse criminal acts.