Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder
| Hypoactive sexual desire disorder | |
|---|---|
| Classification and external resources | |
| Specialty | psychiatry |
| ICD-10 | F52.0 |
| ICD-9-CM | 302.71 |
| MedlinePlus | 001952 |
| MeSH | D020018 |
Hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) or inhibited sexual desire (ISD) is considered a sexual dysfunction and is characterized as a lack or absence of sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity, as judged by a clinician. For this to be regarded as a disorder, it must cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulties and not be better accounted for by another mental disorder, a drug (legal or illegal), some other medical condition, or asexuality. A person with ISD will not start, or respond to their partner's desire for, sexual activity.
There are various subtypes. HSDD can be general (general lack of sexual desire) or situational (still has sexual desire, but lacks sexual desire for current partner), and it can be acquired (HSDD started after a period of normal sexual functioning) or lifelong (the person has always had no/low sexual desire.)
HSDD has garnered much criticism, primarily by asexual activists. They point out that HSDD puts asexuality in the same position homosexuality was from 1974-1987. The DSM at that time recognised 'ego-dystonic homosexuality' as a disorder, defined as sexual interest in the same sex that caused significant distress. The DSM itself officially recognized this as unnecessarily pathologizing homosexuality and removed it as a disorder in 1987.
HSDD was listed under the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders of the DSM-IV. In the DSM-5, it was split into male hypoactive sexual desire disorder and female sexual interest/arousal disorder. It was first included in the DSM-III under the name inhibited sexual desire disorder, but the name was changed in the DSM-III-R. Other terms used to describe the phenomenon include sexual aversion and sexual apathy. More informal or colloquial terms are frigidity and frigidness.
Low sexual desire alone is not equivalent to HSDD because of the requirement in HSDD that the low sexual desire causes marked distress and interpersonal difficulty and because of the requirement that the low desire is not better accounted for by another disorder in the DSM or by a general medical problem. It is therefore difficult to say exactly what causes HSDD. It is easier to describe, instead, some of the causes of low sexual desire.
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