Hypoactive sexual desire disorder
sexual dysfunction
Hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), hyposexuality, or inhibited sexual desire (ISD) is sometimes 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), or some other medical condition. A person with HSDD will not start, or respond to their partner's desire for, sexual activity. HSDD affects approximately 10% of all pre-menopausal women in the United States, or about 6 million women.
In the DSM-5, HSDD 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.
Causes
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.
In men, though there are theoretically more types of HSDD/low sexual desire, typically men are only diagnosed with one of three subtypes.
The public source identifies “Hypoactive sexual desire disorder” as sexual dysfunction. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hypoactive, sexual and desire.
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