Aging and Sexual Health

Last Friday in our class centered around older adults, we had a guest lecturer who talked about the importance of sexual health and aging. She explained the numerous benefits sexual activity can have on the aging adult. Studies have shown that orgasms can relieve pain, reduce stress, improve sleep and boost the immune system. Overall any form of sexual activity can increase cognitive functioning. She then talked about why some older adults participate in a decreased amount of sexual activity and ways we can combat this. Two interventions are listed below: one in a group based setting and one client-based intervention.

One intervention that comes to mind is a group intervention for a group of males with erectile dysfunction. This would involve mostly educating the clients on ways to improve sexual health as you get older. As we age we face many physical changes that affect our ability to perform sexually and one of these is erectile dysfunction. As our guest speaker mentioned there are a couple ways to combat this issue and these include: PDE5 inhibitor, MUSE, vacuum pump, intracaveneous injections, and surgery. These are good medical methods to use with a combination of CBT or a change in the way we think. It is important that we educate individuals on these medical methods and other resources on how to combat this issue as it may arise with age.

A second intervention, more client-based, would be a female client suffering from arthritis and pain during sexual activity. There are a lot of different interventions we could do with this client. First we could work on ROM and stretching. Next we could use heat to loosen up the joints for more movement. Third, we could use CBT to change the negative thoughts and focus energy on more positive thoughts. Lastly and as always would be client education where we could refer them to a sex therapist and educate them on other stretching techniques. 

Our guest lecturer did a great job speaking on this subject. It is a really hard subject to talk about but it is an extremely important one. I think our speaker did a great job stressing this and I am glad I got the opportunity to listen to her. 






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