Asians presenting to a sex and marital therapy clinic

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a retrospective analysis of the clinic registration forms and case files of Asian attenders of a sex and marital problems clinic over a three year period. An age/sex matched English control group was selected for comparison. Diagnoses, presenting patient complaints, sociodemographic characteristics, time between referral and first attendance and outcome of therapy were examined. Our samples of Asian and English attenders of equal educational and occupational status, when examined as two populations, did not differ in terms of diagnoses, sociodemographic characteristics, time from referral to first attendance and outcome of therapy. Differences in presenting complaints reflected individual unique evaluations of changed sexual functioning. There were, however, clearly problems for the Asian group related to differences of language and culture. It may be that our population of Asians was too heterogenous to enable a valid demonstration of these differences between English and Asian samples.