In 2010, hardly a month went by without yet another home video of some public figure’s sexual behavior coming to light. Not only Hollywood personalities and other entertainers engage in the practice, but also sports figures and politicians.

Wikipedia has an extensive catalog of celebrity sex tapes and Shine, Yahoo!’s site tailored for women between the ages of 25 and 54, has published advice and suggestions on recording your own erotic adventures. On other sites, you’ll find reasons why people make sex tapes; these are usually amateur “diagnoses” of narcissism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, or self-destructive behavior. More here.

According to Chelsea Handler, her sex tape “…was made as a joke. I put it on an audition tape for a comedy club, because I’m a comedienne, and I’ve been showing it at birthday parties for (expletive deleted) years!”

At the height of the Tiger Woods infidelity scandal, ABC News published a story with the provocative headline: Tiger Woods a Sex Addict? Only If He’s Lucky.

The gist of the story is that if Mr. Woods were suffering from a bona fide psychological illness, the public might give him a “pass” and his treatment for and recovery from this condition could offer him a route to redemption with his family, fans and the companies that pay him handsomely for product endorsements.

Examples included actors Michael Douglas and David Duchovny, who had publicly described themselves as “sex addicts,” sought treatment, preserved their marriages and enjoyed continued career success.

Unfortunately, Mr. Wood’s marriage didn’t survive nor did Jesse James‘ marriage to Sandra Bullock.

These cases led us to address the question: Is Sex Addiction Real? The answer may surprise you.

While we’re on the subject of addictions, we also did a story on food addiction and obesity as a mental illness. Something to think about as we start our post-holiday diets next month. Finally, there was a lot of speculation about whether Heidi Montag and others could have a plastic surgery addiction and whether this might indicate a narcissistic personality disorder.

Back in October, it was widely reported that actor Charlie Sheen, 45, engaged in “disorderly conduct” in a New York hotel room and, after police intervened, voluntarily checked himself into a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. Upon release, Mr. Sheen’s publicist said that the actor’s behavior was an “allergic reaction” to an unnamed medication.

Sheen has a history of substance abuse and domestic violence and anger management problems. But he’s not the only Hollywood actor with such issues: Mel Gibson, 54, has also been repeatedly in the news for similar behaviors.

Because some forms of antisocial behavior have been classified as psychiatric disorders, we wondered whether extreme anger is considered a bona fide mental disease? See answer here.

There were a few others involving sex and mental health: BBC director Kristian Digby died from autoerotic asphyxiation, the Pope pronounced pedophilia an illness and the film Black Swan was criticized as eating disorder pornography.

Portia De Rossi published a biography and gave a very emotional interview on Oprah about her struggles with anorexia. Anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychological illness because it is frequently associated with other mental health problems and is also frequently under-treated.

Both Michael Douglas and Kylie Minogue belief that psychological stress was a contributing cause of their cancers. Wyclef Jean was hospitalized for stress and Carrie Underwood opened up about her panic attacks. Jon Hamm and Gwyneth Paltrow talked about their struggles with depression (Ms. Paltrow had the post-partum or postnatal kind).

Suicide, cutting and bullying all sadly appeared in the news. Demi Lovato suffered from cutting which is a form of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) which was described in detail by Jude Law‘s former wife Sadie Frost. The death of Phoebe Prince highlighted the problem of bullying and cyberbullying and the fact that suicide is the 3rd most common cause of death in adolescents.

This is the last in our series of four year-end reviews. Our three previous stories were: