[Female sexual dysfunction]

Abstract

Sexual medicine has become an integrated part of womens' health care. Physicians need therefore communication skills to talk about sexuality with their female patients and a knowledge about models of human sexuality, about classification systems, and diagnostic and therapeutic concepts and processes. The diagnostic reaches from a clear description of the sexual problem to an exploration of the conditioning factors. These can be differentiated into biological factors, intraindividual and interpersonal psychological factors and sociocultural factors. These factors can become effective as predisposing, precipitating and maintaining factors. The therapeutic process is based on several steps. The basic step consists in psychoeducation and basic counselling. Therapy usually includes the combination of pharmacologic intervention (hormones, PDE5) and specific psychotherapeutic techniques (sensate focus, cognitive techniques, couple counselling).