{"id":672192,"date":"2026-01-04T00:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T00:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/672192\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T00:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T00:07:11","slug":"more-than-half-of-uk-therapists-report-rise-in-out-of-control-porn-use-pornography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/672192\/","title":{"rendered":"More than half of UK therapists report rise in out-of-control porn use | Pornography"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than half of therapists who work with men with addiction<\/a> have noticed a rise in out-of-control porn use over the past year, according to new data.<\/p>\n

Experts are urgently calling for a national strategy on pornography as a total of 53% of therapists surveyed by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) said they had seen a rise in people seeking help for problematic pornography use that was interfering with their life or driving them to seek out more extreme content.<\/p>\n

The BACP survey of nearly 3,000 accredited therapists and counsellors found a growing number of people claiming to be addicted to pornographic content, with many reporting that they were neglecting their responsibilities or damaging their relationships as a result.<\/p>\n

Some people arrived at therapy with physical sexual problems such as erectile dysfunction, having been referred by NHS sexual health clinics, experts said.<\/p>\n

Dr Paula Hall, an expert in sex and porn addiction, called for the government to urgently look at the problem of porn addiction \u2013 something that affects \u201csignificant numbers\u201d of people of all ages and genders \u2013 and its effects on society more widely.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe desperately need to really understand and evaluate and assess what the economic costs are to society of porn in terms of addiction, in terms of men\u2019s mental health \u2026 as well as developing resources for young people, because at the moment, the government aren\u2019t doing [enough].\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall said porn use came up in the government\u2019s work around age verification, violence against women and girls, child sexual abuse material but said there needed to be an overarching strategy to deal with the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot an anti-porn crusade, that\u2019s absolutely not it, but actually understanding that for some people, a significant number of people, porn does lead to harms. And how do we actually begin to do something and address that?\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the biggest issues was the levels of shame and stigma associated with porn use that creates \u201ca sense of growing isolation because you\u2019re not talking about it\u201d, said Hall.<\/p>\n

Because of this, she set up the not-for-profit service Pivotal Recovery<\/a>, an online self-help resource that can act as a starting point for people struggling with problematic porn use.<\/p>\n

Hall, who has written several books on the subject, founded the Laurel Centre<\/a>, which specialises in treating sex and porn addiction. It also trains therapists in helping their clients with the problem, a service that is getting \u201cbusier and busier\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is common for people not to initially recognise they have a problem, she said, and to first seek treatment for something else. Clients are often referred from couples counselling or through therapy for anxiety or depression, or other addictions.<\/p>\n

Hall described porn addiction as a spectrum disorder that can start out a something recreational but \u201cbuilds into more problematic use, it becomes more and more habitual, becomes a way of escaping uncomfortable emotions\u201d.<\/p>\n

She wanted to challenge the stigma about seeking help and called for more awareness and early intervention before people became dependent on it as their main coping strategy.<\/p>\n

Hall said: \u201cThe average person struggling with their usage, this being a problem, is a narrative that\u2019s not really come out much to date. And the more we talk about that, I think the more people are going to start coming forward for help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Harvey, a BACP-accredited therapist in Nottingham who works with clients with addiction, said porn addiction often causes serious personal issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re neglecting maybe their studies, work, or often the intimacy with their partner is suffering.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnline porn can deliver huge amounts of novelty or difference. And that, from a stimulation perspective, for some folks, can be more so than their partner, and once they feel compelled and out of control around that, then their intimacy with their partner suffers and [porn] becomes their only intimacy, so there\u2019s an escalation.\u201d<\/p>\n

On top of that, many sufferers also expressed concern over seeking out more extreme content over time to satisfy their compulsion, he said. Sometimes this would cause confusion, especially when they felt it did not align with their sexual preferences.<\/p>\n

While there is a debate about whether pornography can be addictive in the truest sense, many sufferers find it encroaches enormously into their day-to-day activities, with some users watching porn for hours on end and unable to complete daily tasks as a result.<\/p>\n

Harvey said: \u201cAnecdotally, for many of us who work in the field, it certainly looks and feels a lot like addiction. And I think clients come with what they describe as addiction because that\u2019s what\u2019s in that discourse, and certainly their experience is very addictive-like.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said treatment was not about banning or abstaining from anything sexual, and that there were ways in which people felt they benefited from porn, for example, in understanding their sexuality.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope the outcome is that people find joy within their sexual being rather than something that feels out of control and is hurting them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than half of therapists who work with men with addiction have noticed a rise in out-of-control porn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-672192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115833919931919201","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}