I was all set not to talk about sex addiction for a few days, but then this happened: The American Psychiatric Association announced today its proposed changes to the DSM-V, which is due out in 2013. Among them is a new category of “behavioral addictions.” Unfortunately, it likely will include only one behavior—gambling.

The committee says it looked at sex addiction and reserves the right to include it in the future, but that there wasn’t yet enough scientific evidence. “It was not at the point where we were ready to call it an addiction,” Darrel Regier, head of research at the psychiatric association and vice-chair of the DSM-5 task force, told USA Today. (He might have added, “And the reason we weren’t ready is because government won’t fund studies about sex addiction, and lots of people would make fun of us if we actually called it ‘sex addiction.’”)

Instead, Rieger and company created a new category, hypersexuality, which is basically a way to call something sex addiction without actually calling it sex addiction. Sneaky! And an important step forward.

The committee also created a new category for binge eating, which was expected, because, as I explore in America Anonymous, there has been significant research in this area. I would argue that binge eating should be called compulsive overeating and should be in the behavioral addiction category, along with gambling addiction, but, again, it’s a step in the right direction.

I’ll be sure to write more on the proposed changes soon.