Male Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder - Epidemiology

The best information on the epidemiology of sexual disinterest in men comes from surveys of the average population and convenience samples. In the literature on this subject, little undertake is made to distinguish between the different diagnostic subtypes.

An excellent source of population-based information on sexual disinterest in men arrives from the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS; 15). 78 Maurice Laumann and his colleagues interviewed a probability sample of 3432 adults (including 1410 men) in the US between the ages of 18 and 59. Because the study is so oftentimes cited, it is worth examining the results in some detail.

In a 90 min interview on many sex-related subjects, one of the questions asked was during the last 12 months has there ever been a period of several months or more when you lacked interest in having sex? (No obvious attempt was made to subtype the responses.) Overall, 16% of the men said they were indeed not interested in sex (vs. 33% of the women). When the responses were assembled into 5-year groupings, the highest numbers of those who answered yes were from men who were in two groups: those who were 40 44 and 50 59 years old. These numbers do not quite fit with the standard perception of waning sexual desire with increasing age. The figures seem to suggest a greater degree of complexness. Contrary to expectations, the fewest men who answered yes were in the group of men who were 44 49 years. Looking at the opposite end of the sexually active age spectrum, and again not quite fitting with average beliefs, 14% of the youngest group of men (18 24 years old) also answered positively.

Some social constituents examined in the Laumann et al. study correlated with lack of sexual desire in men. Those who answered affirmatively included 20% of the never married men (vs. 12% of the married); 22% of the men whose education was less than high school (vs. most of the other levels of education where the range was 13 16%); and 20% of black men (vs. 15% of whites). The impact of religion was unclear with no one religious group outstanding. The relationship to poverty was large in that 25% of poor men responded positively (vs. 13 15% of men at other income levels).

In the same survey, health and happiness were also separately connected with sexual disinterest. The greater the impairment of health and the magnitude of unhappiness, the greater the extent of sexual disinterest.

Further analysis of the sexual dysfunction data from the NHSLS survey used multivariate techniques to estimate the relative risk (RR) for each demographic characteristic as well as for essential risk factors. In comparing the oldest group of men to the youngest, the former were three times as potential to have low sexual desire. Similarly, never married men were almost three times as likely to experience lack of sexual desire compared to those who were currently married.

The statistical method of latent class analysis (LCA) was also applied for analyzing risk constituents and quality-of-life concomitants in relation to categories of sexual dysfunction rather than individual symptoms. Risk factors that were found to be predictors of low sexual desire in men involved daily alcohol consumption, poor to fair health, and emotional problems or stress. The same was true of thinking about sex less than once weekly (more than three times as likely vs. those who thought about sex more than once weekly), ever had any same-sex activity (more than twice as likely vs. those that never did), and sexually touched before puberty (about twice as likely vs. those that were not touched).

When looking at quality-of-life concomitants, men with low sexual desire experienced a low level of physical satisfaction and a low level of general happiness, with their primary partner.

Another survey using a stratified probability sample was conducted in Britain and concerned the prevalence of sexual function problems in people who had at least one heterosexual partner in the past year. The study took place from 1999 to 2000 and involved 11,461 men and women aged 16 44. The response rate was 65.4%. Problems were reported according to two duration periods: those which lasted at least 1 month in the past year, and those which lasted at least six months in the past year. Thirty-five percent of men described at least one sexual problem in the past year, and lack of interest in sex was the most common such concern (17%) in the shorter time period. The prevalence dropped to 2% when considering the at least 6-months time frame.

In yet another study involving 100 normal volunteer couples who were well-educated and who considered their marriages as ones that were working, Frank et al. found that a similar (to the US and UK studies) percentage of men (16%) were sexually disinterested. Similarly, when a sample of gay men were asked about sexual concerns, including lack of desire in or desire for sex, 16% said it was a current problem and 49% pointed that it was a problem at some time in their lives.

About The Author

David Crawford is the CEO and owner of a treating impotence company known as Male Enhancement Group which is dedicated to researching and comparing male enhancement products in order to determine which male enhancement product is safer and more effective than other products on the market. Copyright 2010 David Crawford of how to avoid premature ejaculation This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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