Objective: Sexual dysfunction is frequently reported as a side effect of many antidepressant medications. As a result, for those depressed patients to whom sexual desire is important, psychological treatment may be a better intervention. Thus, the present study aimed to determine the possible changes in sexual desire following psychological treatments in depression, when focus of therapy is not...

INTRODUCTION Sexual health of the elderly has long been either a taboo or a non-medical life style luxury issue. Increasing longevity of women and men, reconceptualization of sexual health as part of general health, and the development of drugs aiming at improvement of sexual function have contributed to a change in the attitude of the elderly and the medical community, thus increasing the dema...

In 2010, The New View Campaign compiled 27 counter-narratives to present evidence that challenged the perceived value and need for Flibanserin, a drug proposed to treat ‘Hypoactive sexual desire disorder,’ a subset of ‘Female Sexual Dysfunction.’ The counter-narratives were published studies that highlighted the social, cultural, psychological, and interpersonal factors at the core of women’s s...

The 19th century medical attitude to normal female sexuality was cruel, with gynecologists and psychiatrists leading the way in designing operations for the cure of the serious contemporary disorders of masturbation and nymphomania. The gynecologist Isaac Baker Brown (1811-1873) and the distinguished endocrinologist Charles Brown-Séquard (1817-1894) advocated clitoridectomy to prevent the progr...

The Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) is a brief multidimensional scale for assessing sexual function in women. The scale has received initial psychometric evaluation, including studies of reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity (Meston, 2003; Rosen et al., 2000). The present study was designed to crossvalidate the FSFI in several samples of women with mixed sexual dysfunc...

On August 18, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a first in class multifunctional serotonin agonist and antagonist medication, flibanserin, for the treatment of generalized acquired hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) in premenopausal women. This approval was surrounded by political posturing that has resulted in naysayers attacking the science based on their feelin...

TheUKMedicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency will neither confirm nor deny it, but flibanserin is likely to be coming to British shores. Its maker, Sprout Pharmaceuticals, told me that it is “committed to working closely with other regulatory bodies outside the US . . . to bring to market a safe and effective treatment for the millions of women around the world affected by distressi...