Forensic mental health counselors can also provide porn addiction help to someone even if they are not involved in the legal system.  In some situations, other mental health services cannot deal with someone’s risk or challenging behavior, particularly those related to sexual in nature. Compulsive pornography use, or other forms of sexual acting out among adults and juveniles affects all types of people from all cultural backgrounds and all economic classes. Individuals with sexual behavior problems are often reluctant to seek help because they don’t recognize or perhaps acknowledge that their sexual behaviors are a major cause of their life problems. When they do reach out, they most often seek help not for the sexual behavior problem itself, to address residual symptoms of the problem, such as depression or relationship and family issues. In other cases, when problematic sexual behaviors in adults and juveniles are discovered within families, discomfort, shame, embarrassment, and other negative reactions, keep people from asking for help. The consequences of minimizing these sexual behavior problems can be devastating to families making it imperative to reach out to a qualified professional who specializes in assisting individuals and family facing these issues.   Pathways Forensic & Mental Health Services offers therapeutic assistance for adults or juveniles with sexual behavior problems.

Signs of Pornography Addiction

What begins with occasional or sporadic internet searches for pornography, can quickly escalate to compulsive desires to view pornography. According to the Sexual Recovery Institute, most individuals with compulsive urges to view pornography spend at least 11 or 12 hours per week (sometimes more) on electronics looking for images or video as sexual stimulants. Although the magazines and DVDs is still widespread, most of these individuals prefer the anonymity, affordability and round-the-clock accessibility of the Internet. This compulsion can reach the point where it interferes with healthy activities, resulting in relationship, career, and health, financial and legal troubles.

Common signs that casual porn use has escalated to the level of addiction include:

• Continued porn use despite consequences and/or promises to stop
• Increasing the amount of time spent on porn use
• Significant periods of time (hours or days) lost to finding and viewing pornography
• Needing to increase the intensity or type of sexual content viewed in order to get a fix
• Lying and covering up the nature and extent of porn use
• Anger or irritability if asked to stop
• Loss of interest in sexual relationships with spouses or partners
• Feeling alone or detached from others
• Using drugs or alcohol in conjunction with porn
• Objectifying strangers, or viewing them as body parts rather than people
• Escalation to using the Internet for anonymous sexual hookups or to find prostitutes