December 31st 2019
Adolescents explore their sexuality. In most cases, this exploration is normative. At times, however, compulsive sexual behavior is developed and maintained.
April 9th 2013
Sexual Minority Identity Development
December 16th 2011Sexual identity development is a complex, multidimensional, and often fluid process. One must consider cognitive, social, emotional, cultural, and familial complexities among other aspects of the individual’s experience to contextualize a narrative concerning sexual identity development.
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Video: Sexual Desire and Its Deficiencies
November 22nd 2011Diminishing libido is a symptom of depression, but antidepressants do not always restore sexual interest. Loss of desire may be the cause of depression, not its consequence. Dr Levine explains the nature of sexual desire and its relationship to arousal including the various biogenic, psychogenic, interpersonal, and cultural factors that contribute to problems associated with sexual desire.
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Which tool is helpful in screening for sexual addiction? Is the symptom severity in women treated for substance abuse generally equivalent to that of males? Structural abnormalities in which brain areas have been associated with substance abuse? These questions and more in this quiz.
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FDA Lacks Desire for Flibanserin-But Does Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder Even Exist?
August 4th 2010Consider the predicament of Mrs M, a 38-year-old premenopausal mother of two. Mrs M tells her primary care physician, “I just don’t have a strong desire for sex. It’s been about 10 years now, and I hardly ever have sexual thoughts or fantasies.
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Normality Is an Endangered Species: Psychiatric Fads and Overdiagnosis
July 6th 2010Fads in psychiatric diagnosis come and go and have been with us as long as there has been psychiatry. The fads meet a deeply felt need to explain, or at least to label, what would otherwise be unexplainable human suffering and deviance.
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DSM5 and Sexual Disorders - Just Say No
March 18th 2010A major general problem in the preparation of DSM5 is that the various Work Groups have been given far too little guidance and support. This explains why: 1)most of the criteria sets are written so obscurely and inconsistently; 2) the rationales for change vary so widely in depth and quality across Work Groups,and; 3) so many suggestions that should have no chance at all have made it this far without being tossed.
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Clinical Manual of Sexual Disorders
February 23rd 2010This 3-part manual on sexual disorders is edited by 2 psychiatrists who have been engaged for more than 20 years in the clinical treatment of patients with sexual problems. Drs Balon and Segraves bring their rich experience to this field. Patients who have sexual disorders need extra time to present their questions of doubt, confusion, misunderstanding, and perhaps guilt and shame. They also need clarification and understanding-and possible answers and reassurance.
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Female Sexual DysfunctionWhat We Know, What We Suspect, and Enduring Enigmas
June 8th 2009From time to time, health conditions emerge that are relative “orphans” when it comes to having the resources of a health care discipline or subspecialty to take ownership or accept responsibility for developing the body of knowledge that underlies their systematic evaluation and treatment. Female sexual dysfunction (FSD) is such a class of conditions.
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Therapy for Sexual Impulsivity: The Paraphilias and Paraphilia-Related Disorders
August 25th 2006Paraphilias as defined by DSM-IV, are sexual impulse disorders characterized by intensely arousing, recurrent sexual fantasies, urges and behaviors (of at least six months' duration) that are considered deviant with respect to cultural norms and that produce clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of psychosocial functioning. The common paraphilias described include exhibitionism (exposure of genitals to a stranger), pedophilia (sexual activity with a prepubescent child, generally 13 years of age or younger), voyeurism (observing others' sexual activities), fetishism (use of inert objects, such as female undergarments), transvestic fetishism (cross-dressing), sexual sadism (inflicting suffering or humiliation), sexual masochism (being humiliated, beaten, bound or made to suffer) and frotteurism (touching, rubbing against a nonconsenting person).
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Therapy for Sexual Impulsivity: The Paraphilias and Paraphilia-Related Disorders
June 1st 1996Paraphilias as defined by DSM-IV, are sexual impulse disorders characterized by intensely arousing, recurrent sexual fantasies, urges and behaviors (of at least six months' duration) that are considered deviant with respect to cultural norms and that produce clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of psychosocial functioning.
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