Re: Is it possible pedophilia is a sickness?

Rather than echo the comments about definitions (which I agree with), I want to point out it's not true that only pedophiles say pedophiles aren't sick. Psychiatrists don't use the term "sickness" in the first place, but disorder means about the same thing. And the relatively recent DSM 5 (The American shrinks' diagnosis manual) finally acknowledges that paraphilias (which include pedophilia and hebephilia) are not necessarily disorders.

Unfortunately there are no particular insights beyond that. They define are paraphilic disorder (as opposed to just a paraphilia) as one that causes the particular patient distress, impairment or makes them harm other people. So in other words they say pedophilia is a disorder (sickness) only when it causes problems. Which is... well it's either brilliantly simple or stupidly simple, depending on what kind of answer you were hoping for.

For the record, they do make the assumption that having sexual contact with a child is harmful. So a "practicing" pedophile would be sick by their definition.