Is Sadomasochism a mental illness?

Under current DSM guidelines, from the American Psychiatric Institute, it is only a mental illness if it is causing you grave emotional distress and impairing your daily activities in such a way tha tyou feel you do not function normally.

What I think personally, is that there is a better way to live. There is effective treatment for Sadomasochism without taking medication. It is called cognitive behavioral therapy and also Behavioral therapy..

For more info on Sadomasochism and treatment follow the wiki link below.

"in the textual revision of the DSM-IV TR (2000), sadomasochistic behavior is a sexual and mental disorder if the patient “has acted on these urges with a non-consenting person” and if “the urges, sexual fantasies, or behaviors cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty"
so basically sadism is considered a mental illness only if a sadist beat up other people unconsentually, and if masochism and sadism causes distress. so masochist are rarely consider a mental illness, btw mental illness of sexual attraction don't quite work the same way other mental illness such as adhd and schizophrenia. it's not damaging to the body unlike body illness like fever or like they are the stereotypical crazy, it's just a sexual attraction that's hated by society and most of the time damaging to society, i don't see that u have a lot of distress and ur not a sadist who beat people without their consent, so no, ur not a paraphilliac according to DSM by american psychiatric association, but most psychiatric organization and other organization that diagnose mental illness in other countries still regard all masochists and sadists as illed, that include the world health organization( international) btw denmark removed all sadists and masochists from mental illness. personally i think sadism is a mental illness but masochism isn't, as for can it be cured.there's is a way to take away anyone's sexual attraction, and that's castration, which is also a way to make a person no longer a pedophile or homosexual. but it doesnt turn u from masochist or sadist to vanilla. it turns u to asexual. also it's hard to reproduce after castration. so i think that unless u are a sadist who want to severally injure people and u can't control ur urges not to(most sadists are not). i don't think castration is worth it