title: PATHOS: a brief screening application for assessing sexual addiction.
abstract: Sexual addiction is estimated to afflict up to 3% to 6% of the population. However, many clinicians lack clear criteria for detecting potential cases.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The present studies were conducted to assess the effectiveness of a brief sexual addiction screening instrument (ie, PATHOS Questionnaire) to correctly classify patients being treated for sex addiction and healthy volunteers.
  
  
  METHODS
  In study 1, a 6-item questionnaire, which utilizes the mnemonic "PATHOS," was examined in regard to sensitivity and specificity using a sample combining patients being treated for sex addiction and healthy volunteers (970 men/80.2% patients; 938 women/63.8% patients). In study 2, a cross-validation sample of 672 men (93% patients) and 241 women (35.3% patients) completed the PATHOS screener.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results of receiver operating characteristics analyses in study 1 demonstrated that the PATHOS captured 92.6% of the area under the curve and achieved 88.3% sensitivity and 81.6% specificity for classifying the male sample (n = 963) as patients and healthy subjects using a cutoff score of 3. Similarly, the PATHOS captured 90.2% of the area under the curve and, with a cutoff of 3, achieved 80.9% sensitivity and 87.2% specificity for the female sample (n = 808). In study 2, results of receiver operating characteristics analyses indicated that the PATHOS captured 85.1% of the area under the curve, with sensitivity of 70.7% and specificity of 86.9% for men (cutoff of 3). For women, the PATHOS captured 80.9% of the area under the curve and achieved 69.7% sensitivity and 85.1% specificity with the cutoff of 3.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These studies provide support for the use of the PATHOS as a screening instrument to detect potential sexual addiction cases in clinical settings.
authors.affiliation: Pine Grove Behavioral Health Services, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, USA.
authors.forename: Patrick J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Carnes
authors.forename: Bradley A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Green
authors.forename: Lisa J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Merlo
authors.forename: Alexis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Polles
authors.forename: Stefanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Carnes
authors.forename: Mark S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Gold
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D016739:Behavior, Addictive / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D008875:Middle Aged; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012114:Residential Treatment; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult