ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL FUNCTION - ENABLES REHABILITATIVE SEXUAL THERAPY

People with a disability or a chronic illness should be offered sexual counselling or therapy according to their needs. Disability and illness often cause either directly or indirectly different forms of functional sexual disturbances. They cause more often than other factors special disturbances that have an impact on human sexual response and the quality of sexual life.
Sexual counselling aimed at handicapped and chronically ill people can be called rehabilitative sexual therapy. Analysis of sexual function is necessary for assessing therapymodels and the effectiveness of therapymethods.

Sexual function can be divided into seven different dimensions:
1. Sensomotor ability (mobility, movement, using hands, the senses and the pelvic floor muscles).
2. Cognitive ability (knowledge and skills, speech, to create mental images and fantasies, bodyimage and feelings).
3. Psychological ability (selfesteem, selfindentity and the experience of oneself as a woman/man).
4. Social ability (human relations, roles, interaction- and communicationskills).
5. Emotional ability (feelings).
6. Spiritual ability (spirit, energy and giving up control).
7. Dimension of sex functions (libido, excitement, orgasm, erectional response, vaginal lubrication, erogenic zones and hormones).

Every dimension has it own special function in human sexuality and its expression, but sexual function is more than the sum of its dimensions. All dimensions and their elements are interrelated and a change in one element has an effect on all the other elements.

When assessing human sexual function, the persons lifehistory is important and has to be taken into account (includes his/her sexual history). Sexual orientation, partnership/companionship/ singleness/solitariness, living- and other environment, cultur, time and healthstatus must be assessed too.

“Desire- everyday sexuality” should be natural right for handicapped and the chronically ill people.