International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals


The International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals is one of several for-profit organizations that provides training and certification for people who want to offer sexual addiction counseling services. The concept of sexual addiction is contentious in the fields of psychology, medicine, and neuroscience, and was not included in the DSM as of 2017.
IITAP'a training and certification program is based on the work of Patrick Carnes, who did pioneering work in sexual compulsion in the 1980s and who founded IIAPT; his wife Stephanie, also a sex therapist, is its president.
Public interest in sexual addiction and IITAP's programs is often driven by celebrities caught up in scandal, and blaming their trouble on sexual addition.