It's Not Nymphomania

REN discovers: Rube, we are not alone...

This story was printed from TODAYonline
Friday • March 24, 2006

— AFP

PARIS

— A health journal describes a newly-identified syndrome affecting women
— non-stop sexual arousal that can last for months and cannot be satisfied
regardless of the number of orgasms.

The paper, which appears in the International Journal of Sexually-Transmitted
Diseases and Aids, tentatively calls it Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome, or
PSAS.

It seems to affect only a small minority of women but the true extent is
unclear.

Sometimes embarrassing and often humiliating, the condition is unwanted
because it occurs in the absence of genuine sexual interest. Some women have
been so depressed by the problem that they have even been driven to
electroshock therapy. PSAS is a "distressing and perplexing condition," say
the authors, Dr David Goldmeier of St Mary's Hospital in London and Dr Sandra
Leiblum of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.
"Women with this clinical experience find the symptoms unwelcome since the
genital arousal is usually persistent, unprovoked and unrelieved by orgasm.
"Indeed, women with persistent genital arousal report a high degree of
psychological distress and even suicidal thoughts."

The syndrome is a physical disorder in which the labia, vulva and clitoris
become engorged with blood, causing arousal.

PSAS is different from the psychological condition of hypersexuality, the
medical term for nymphomania.

But the causes for the syndrome remain unclear because it is such a
newly-identified and thus poorly-explored condition and those who suffer from
it tend to do so in silence.

Anecdotal evidence points to the entrapment of local nerves or a disorder in
blood circulation around the genitals.

Another suspected culprit is a class of antidepressants called selective
serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Some women who have discontinued with these
drugs have reported PSAS symptoms that typically last a few days to a few
weeks.

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