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Sexual Life and Associated Factors in Psychiatric Patients

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Abstract

This descriptive and cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate the specific factors that influence the sex lives of psychiatric patients. The study sample consisted of patients who received care in the psychiatry department of a university hospital (N = 200). Data were collected using a questionnaire developed according to information available in the literature and the Arizona Sexual Experience Scale. The mean age of the patients in the study was 36.70 ± 10.34 years. Additionally, 58% (n = 116) of the patients were female, and 42% (n = 84) were male. The diagnostic composition of the sample was 25% of patients with schizophrenia, 25% with bipolar disorder, 25% with depression, and 25% with anxiety disorder. More than half of the patients (57.5%) expressed that they had a reduced sex drive compared to their predisease condition, and 39% of the patients claimed that their treatment contributed to their reduced sexual drive. Moreover, 30.5% of the patients expressed that they had no knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases. Utilizing the Arizona Sexual Experience Scale, sexual dysfunction was observed in 74% (n = 144) of the patients. The incidence of sexual dysfunction in people diagnosed with schizophrenia was found to besignificantly higher than that of the patients in other diagnosis groups (p = h0, 002**).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank all participants for taking part in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mental Health and Psychiatric Department Psychiatry Clinic Nurse, Kocaeli University Medical Faculty, Kocaeli, Turkey

    Aysel İncedere

  2. Department of Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing, Florence Nightingale Nursing Faculty, Istanbul University, Şişli- Istanbul, Turkey

    Leyla Küçük

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  1. Aysel İncedere
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  2. Leyla Küçük
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Correspondence to Leyla Küçük.

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All authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

Approval to implement the study in Kocaeli, Türkiye was received from the Kocaeli University Ethics Committee on July 8, 2014 (KOÜ KAEK 2014/207). They declare that they have full control of all primary data and agree to allow the journal to review their data if requested. All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Online informed consent was available and obtained from all individual participants included in the study. No sensitive or identifiable data were collected for the purposes of this study.

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İncedere, A., Küçük, L. Sexual Life and Associated Factors in Psychiatric Patients. Sex Disabil 35, 89–106 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11195-017-9475-y

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