Symptoms are often identified as being in one of three categories:

1. panic, discomfort, and uncontrolled spontaneous movement;

2. sensory problems, such as visual or auditory hallucination; and

3. irrational beliefs.

Somatic symptoms can include sensations and pain in head, chest and back, abdomen, limbs, or whole body; whereas, mental and emotional symptoms can include neurasthenia, affective disorder, self-consciousness, hallucination, and paranoia.

While the Chinese Society of Psychiatry prefers the term "qigong deviation", the American Psychiatric Association uses psychosis terminology. Some physicians believe that this disease can be categorized as a culture-bound syndrome, but this point is debated.

The condition was explained as being a result of exhaustion of the central nervous system's energy reserves, which Beard attributed to modern civilization. Physicians in the Beard school of thought associated neurasthenia with the stresses of urbanization and with stress suffered as a result of the increasingly competitive business environment. Typically, it was associated with upper class people and with professionals working in sedentary occupations, but really can apply to anyone who lives within the monetary system.

Freud included a variety of physical symptoms in this category, including fatigue, dyspepsia with flatulence, and indications of intra-cranial pressure and spinal irritation. In common with some other people of the time, he believed this condition to be due to "non-completed coitus" or the non-completion of the higher cultural correlate thereof, or to "infrequency of emissions" or the infrequent practice of the higher cultural correlate thereof. Later, Freud formulated that in cases of coitus interruptus as well as in cases of masturbation, there was "an insufficient libidinal discharge" that had a poisoning effect on the organism, in other words, neurasthenia was the result of (auto-)intoxication. Eventually he separated it from anxiety neurosis, though he believed that a combination of the two conditions existed in many cases.

From 1869, neurasthenia became a "popular" diagnosis, expanding to include such symptoms as weakness, dizziness and fainting, and a common treatment was the rest cure, especially for women, who were the gender primarily diagnosed with this condition at that time. Recent analysis, however, of data from this period gleaned from the Annual Reports of Queen Square Hospital, London, indicates that the diagnosis was more evenly balanced between the sexes than is commonly thought. Virginia Woolf was known to have been forced to have rest cures, which she describes in her book "On Being Ill". Charlotte Perkins Gilman's protagonist in "The Yellow Wallpaper" also suffers under the auspices of rest cure doctors, much as Gilman herself did. Marcel Proust was said to suffer from neurasthenia. To capitalize on this epidemic, the Rexall drug company introduced a medication called 'Americanitis Elixir' which claimed to be a soother for any bouts related to Neurasthenia.

Sexual addiction, also known as sex addiction, is a state characterized by [[compulsive]] participation or engagement in [[Human sexual activity|sexual activity]], particularly [[sexual intercourse]], despite negative consequences. Proponents of a [[diagnostic model]] for sexual addiction, as defined here, consider it to be one of several sex-related disorders within an umbrella concept known as [[hypersexual disorder]]. The term "sexual dependence" is also used to refer to people who report being unable to control their [[sexual urges]], behaviors, or thoughts. Related models of pathological sexual behavior include [[hypersexuality]] (nymphomania and satyriasis), [[erotomania]], [[Don Juanism]] (or Don Juanitaism), and [[paraphilia]]-related disorders.

The concept of sexual addiction is contentious. There is considerable debate amongst [[psychiatrists]], psychologists, [[sexologist]]s, and other specialists whether compulsive sexual behavior constitutes an addiction, and therefore its classification and possible diagnosis. , sexual addiction is not a clinical diagnosis in either the [[Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders|DSM]] or [[International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems|ICD]] medical classifications of diseases and medical disorders. Some argue that applying such concepts to normal behaviors such as sex, can be problematic, and suggest that applying medical models such as addiction to human sexuality can serve to [[Slut-shaming|pathologise normal behavior]] and cause harm

Neuroscientists, pharmacologists, molecular biologists, and other researchers in related fields have identified the [[transcription factor|transcriptional]] and [[epigenetic]] mechanisms of addiction [[pathophysiology]]. Diagnostic models, which use the pharmacological model of addiction (this model associates addiction with drug-related concepts, particularly [[physical dependence]], [[drug withdrawal]], and [[drug tolerance]]), do not currently include diagnostic criteria to identify sexual addictions in a clinical setting. In the brain disease model of addiction, which uses neuropsychological concepts to characterize addictions, sexual addictions are identifiable and well-characterized. In this model, [[addictive drugs]] are characterized as those which are both [[reinforcing]] and [[reward system|rewarding]]. Addictive behaviors (those which can induce a compulsive state) are similarly identified and characterized by their rewarding and reinforcing properties.

In "Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity", authors Taylor and Francis argue that: "Obsessive sexual behavior illness is defined by a continual pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges."

None of the official diagnostic classification frameworks list "sexual addiction" as a distinct disorder.