Honest Answers on Sexual Health
The questions patients hesitate to ask - and what I wish more people knew.
In a typical week, half of my consultations include a question about sexual health, and almost all of them are asked at the very end of the appointment, in a lower voice, after I have stood up to say goodbye.
This tells me something about how rarely these questions get asked at all. Patients carry them for years, sometimes decades, before finally finding a doctor in a setting where it feels safe.
A clinic should be the easiest place in your life to ask a difficult question, not the hardest.
The most common concerns I see — performance anxiety, libido changes, painful intercourse, uncertainty after a first experience, worry about something a friend said — are almost always treatable, and almost always more common than the patient assumes. Most of what causes shame is, medically, completely ordinary.
If you are unsure whether your concern is "big enough" for an appointment, the answer is yes. The work of the consultation is to help you name what you are experiencing and then decide together what, if anything, needs to change. There is no judgement in this room. There is only information, and the time to ask for it.
Psychiatrist and sexologist, Nizamabad. Writing here every other week about mental and sexual health, plainly and without judgement.