Female Sexual Dysfunction

Has your sex life lost some of its spark because your body feels unresponsive or you're just not interested? You might take comfort in knowing that as many as four in 10 women have the same problem at some point in their lives. If you have persistent or recurrent problems with sexual response — and if these problems are making you distressed or straining your relationship with your partner — what you're experiencing is known medically as female sexual dysfunction.

Women who suffer from female sexual dysfunction are unable to achieve orgasm despite being sufficiently aroused to have sex. Women differ from men in that orgasm is a learned, not automatic, response. About five to ten percent of women never have an orgasm through any type of sexual activity - a condition called anorgasmia. Anorgasmia is most often the result of sexual inexperience, performance anxiety, or past experiences, such as sexual trauma or a strict upbringing, that have led to an inhibition of sexual response.

It is important that health-care providers understand how to most effectively assess and treat female sexual dysfunction and that they continue to learn about the complex biologic, psychologic, and social underpinnings of these conditions. Coupled with this need is another that compels providers to embrace a broader societal perspective and to extend medical practice beyond pharmacotherapeutic intervention of female sexual dysfunction. There have been calls for gynecologists and primary care providers to be better able to recognize and manage female sexual dysfunction, especially since patients have reported that they expect their provider to be the point of contact for sexual concerns. Above all, there appears to be a substantial need for provider-based approaches that overcome barriers to recognizing female sexual dysfunction and establish more effective open dialogues and referral networks.

There are several subtypes of female sexual dysfunction. They may indicate onset: lifelong (since birth) or acquired. They may be based on context: they may occur in all situations (generalized) or be situation-specific (situational). For example, the disorder may occur with a spouse but not with a different partner. The length of time the female sexual dysfunction has existed and the extent to which it is partner- or situation-specific, as opposed to occurring in all situations, may be the result of different causative factors and may influence the treatment for the disorder. It may be due to psychological factors or due to a combination of factors.

female sexual dysfunction can happen to women. When we say sexual dysfunction, we generally refer to a problem during any of the phases of the sexual response cycle of an individual. female sexual dysfunction normally prevents the person suffering from dysfunction from getting complete satisfaction from the sexual act.