Assessing compulsive sexual behavior disorder: The development and international validation of the compulsive sexual behavior disorder-diagnostic inventory (CSBD-DI).

Background and aims: The World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) includes Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD), a new diagnosis that is both controversial and groundbreaking, as it is the first diagnosis to codify a disorder related to excessive, compulsive, and out-of-control sexual behavior. The inclusion of this novel diagnosis demonstrates a clear need for valid assessments of this disorder that may be quickly administered in both clinical and research settings. Design: The present work details the development of the Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder Diagnostic Inventory (CSBD-DI) across seven samples, four languages, and five countries. Setting: In the first study, data were collected in community samples drawn from Malaysia (N = 375), the U.S. (N = 877), Hungary (N = 7,279), and Germany (N = 449). In the second study, data were collected from nationally representative samples in the U.S. (N = 1,601), Poland (N = 1,036), and Hungary (N = 473). Findings: Across both studies and all samples, results revealed strong psychometric qualities for the 7-item CSBD-DI, demonstrating evidence of validity via correlations with key behavioral indicators and longer measures of compulsive sexual behavior. Analyses from nationally representative samples revealed residual metric invariance across languages, scalar invariance across gender, strong evidence of validity, and utility in classifying individuals who self-identified as having problematic and excessive sexual behavior, as evidenced by ROC analyses revealing suitable cutoffs for a screening instrument. Conclusion: Collectively, these findings demonstrate the cross-cultural utility of the CSBD-DI as a novel measure for CSBD and provide a brief, easily administrable instrument for screening for this novel disorder.

Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll: hypothesizing common mesolimbic activation as a function of reward gene polymorphisms.

The nucleus accumbens, a site within the ventral striatum, plays a prominent role in mediating the reinforcing effects of drugs of abuse, food, sex, and other addictions. Indeed, it is generally believed that this structure mandates motivated behaviors such as eating, drinking, and sexual activity, which are elicited by natural rewards and other strong incentive stimuli. This article focuses on sex addiction, but we hypothesize that there is a common underlying mechanism of action for the powerful effects that all addictions have on human motivation. That is, biological drives may have common molecular genetic antecedents, which if impaired, lead to aberrant behaviors. Based on abundant scientific support, we further hypothesize that dopaminergic genes, and possibly other candidate neurotransmitter-related gene polymorphisms, affect both hedonic and anhedonic behavioral outcomes. Genotyping studies already have linked gene polymorphic associations with alcohol and drug addictions and obesity, and we anticipate that future genotyping studies of sex addicts will provide evidence for polymorphic associations with specific clustering of sexual typologies based on clinical instrument assessments. We recommend that scientists and clinicians embark on research coupling the use of neuroimaging tools with dopaminergic agonistic agents to target specific gene polymorphisms systematically for normalizing hyper- or hypo-sexual behaviors.

PATHOS: a brief screening application for assessing sexual addiction.

UNLABELLED: Sexual addiction is estimated to afflict up to 3% to 6% of the population. However, many clinicians lack clear criteria for detecting potential cases. OBJECTIVES: The present studies were conducted to assess the effectiveness of a brief sexual addiction screening instrument (ie, PATHOS Questionnaire) to correctly classify patients being treated for sex addiction and healthy volunteers. METHODS: In study 1, a 6-item questionnaire, which utilizes the mnemonic "PATHOS," was examined in regard to sensitivity and specificity using a sample combining patients being treated for sex addiction and healthy volunteers (970 men/80.2% patients; 938 women/63.8% patients). In study 2, a cross-validation sample of 672 men (93% patients) and 241 women (35.3% patients) completed the PATHOS screener. RESULTS: Results of receiver operating characteristics analyses in study 1 demonstrated that the PATHOS captured 92.6% of the area under the curve and achieved 88.3% sensitivity and 81.6% specificity for classifying the male sample (n = 963) as patients and healthy subjects using a cutoff score of 3. Similarly, the PATHOS captured 90.2% of the area under the curve and, with a cutoff of 3, achieved 80.9% sensitivity and 87.2% specificity for the female sample (n = 808). In study 2, results of receiver operating characteristics analyses indicated that the PATHOS captured 85.1% of the area under the curve, with sensitivity of 70.7% and specificity of 86.9% for men (cutoff of 3). For women, the PATHOS captured 80.9% of the area under the curve and achieved 69.7% sensitivity and 85.1% specificity with the cutoff of 3. CONCLUSIONS: These studies provide support for the use of the PATHOS as a screening instrument to detect potential sexual addiction cases in clinical settings.

Evidence-based practice for marriage and family therapists.

The purpose of this article is to integrate science into clinical practice by introducing marriage and family therapists to the ideas of evidence-based practice (EBP). Evidence-based practice, which originated in the medical field, refers to the process of using research to make clinical decisions that best meet the needs of each client. Included in the description is a brief history of EBPs and ideas about learning EBPs. Suggestions are also made about the use of EBPs in MFT training programs, and resources are provided to enable clinicians to use EBPs in clinical practice.