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

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.

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.

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

Dr Paula Hall, an expert in sex and porn addiction, called for the government to urgently look at the problem of porn addiction – something that affects “significant numbers” of people of all ages and genders – and its effects on society more widely.

“We 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’s mental health … as well as developing resources for young people, because at the moment, the government aren’t doing [enough].”

Hall said porn use came up in the government’s 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.

“Not an anti-porn crusade, that’s 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?”

One of the biggest issues was the levels of shame and stigma associated with porn use that creates “a sense of growing isolation because you’re not talking about it”, said Hall.

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

Hall, who has written several books on the subject, founded the Laurel Centre, which specialises in treating sex and porn addiction. It also trains therapists in helping their clients with the problem, a service that is getting “busier and busier”.

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.

Hall described porn addiction as a spectrum disorder that can start out a something recreational but “builds into more problematic use, it becomes more and more habitual, becomes a way of escaping uncomfortable emotions”.

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.

Hall said: “The average person struggling with their usage, this being a problem, is a narrative that’s 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.”

Andrew Harvey, a BACP-accredited therapist in Nottingham who works with clients with addiction, said porn addiction often causes serious personal issues.

“They’re neglecting maybe their studies, work, or often the intimacy with their partner is suffering.

“Online 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’s an escalation.”

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.

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.

Harvey said: “Anecdotally, 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’s what’s in that discourse, and certainly their experience is very addictive-like.”

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.

“I hope the outcome is that people find joy within their sexual being rather than something that feels out of control and is hurting them,” he said.