Reviewing 25 Years of Sex Addiction Research

Overview

What are the most effective tools for reinforcing a diagnosis of sexual addiction or identifying sexual compulsivity?

Summary

The concept of sexual addiction or sexual compulsivity comes up with some frequency in cases of possession of child sexual exploitation material.  Depending on the jurisdiction that you work in, the concept of sexual addiction may or may not pass a Daubert challenge.  While Sexual Addiction or any similar diagnosis is not in the DSM-V one must acknowledge that the DSM-V was published almost 10 years ago and there has been a great deal of research on the topic since that time. 

In this 2020 review article but Grubbs et al, the authors conducted a systematic review of studies published between 1995 and 2020.  After starting with 1369 articles, 371 papers met the inclusion criteria and were part of the review.