Though the concept of sex addiction has been a subject of debate for some time, there actually hasn't been an official diagnosis that addresses problematic sexual behavior—until now.

Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) released the proposal for the 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), the first revision of the global standard diagnostic catalogue since 1990. And among the proposed changes is the addition of a mental health condition called compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD), which is a pretty big milestone in the mental health community.

“This is the first time internationally that there is a category for dysregulated or problematic sexual behavior,” Shane W. Kraus, Ph.D., director of the Behavioral Addictions Clinic at the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford, Mass., and assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, who was part of the WHO work group that developed the diagnostic criteria for CSBD, tells SELF.

CSBD is classified as an impulse control disorder, meaning it appears in the ICD-11 alongside conditions like gambling disorder and kleptomania.

CSBD is characterized by “a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behaviour,” according to its diagnostic description in the ICD-11; this can include both the act of sex and sexual fantasies.

The umbrella term “impulse control disorder” includes a variety of psychiatric disorders “whose essential features are the failure to resist an impulse to perform an act that is harmful to the individual or to others,” according to the ICD. Individuals typically experience an increased sense of tension before the act, but then pleasure or gratification when they do the act, it goes on to explain.

According to the ICD, the hallmark symptoms of CSBD are “repetitive sexual activities becoming a central focus of the person’s life to the point of neglecting health and personal care or other interests, activities and responsibilities; numerous unsuccessful efforts to significantly reduce repetitive sexual behaviour; and continued repetitive sexual behaviour despite adverse consequences or deriving little or no satisfaction from it.”

For example, someone with CSBD might be over and over again engaging in sexual behavior that they full well know is damaging their relationship with the person they love, like putting their impulse to have sex over their partner’s desires and other aspects of their relationship, or having sex with someone who is not their partner (assuming they’re in a monogamous relationship) in order to satisfy those strong and frequent urges, or engaging in this behavior to the detriment of their job or other responsibilities.

While the official diagnosis may be new, for many mental health professionals, the condition is something they see and discuss often. “A lot of the therapeutic community has been talking about this issue and working with patients seeking help for these kind of sexual problems long before it was canonized in the ICD-11,” Rory Reid, Ph.D., LCSW, assistant professor and research psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, tells SELF.

Reid compares the lag between clinical evidence of a problem and an official diagnosis to the trajectory of PTSD: The disorder was recognized by the APA in the DSM in 1980 after a wave of veterans sought professional help for their similar experiences. “We had all these military personnel coming back from the Vietnam War having these symptoms—flashbacks, anxiety—and they were going in to therapists and psychiatrists to talk about them,” he says. “So therapists started working with it long before it was canonized as a disease or a disorder, and then the scientific community caught up and said, ‘Yeah we're seeing this, too.’”

It’s worth noting that a CSBD diagnosis is not same thing as having a high sex drive or large number of sexual partners.

Having a lot of sex or sexual desire doesn’t mean you have a condition, similarly to, for instance, how not everyone who drinks what some might consider a lot has alcoholism. “[Their behavior] might cause distress or it might be an issue for them, but it doesn't mean they have a mental health problem,” Kraus explains.