The Effectiveness of Cognitive-behavioral Therapy on Sexual Function and Quality of Marital Relationships in Women with Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder

Sexual interest/arousal disorder in women causes emotional and psychological damage and decreases marital quality and satisfaction and increases marital burnout. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy on the sexual function index and the quality of the marital relationships of women with sexual interest/arousal disorder.

The research method was quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The statistical population included women with sexual interest/arousal disorder referred to counseling centers in Isfahan in 2020-2021, from which 30 people were selected by purposive sampling and randomly assigned to two groups (15 people in each group). Subjects of all two groups were evaluated in the pre-test stage with scales. Then the experimental group underwent an 8-session weekly intervention for two months and the control group did not receive any intervention. At the end of the intervention sessions, the members of the two groups were re-evaluated with research tools. SPSS 23 statistical software and univariate and multivariate covariance analysis statistical methods along with LSD follow-up test were used for data analysis.

The results of covariance analysis showed that cognitive-behavioral therapy was able to improve sexual desire (F=63.069 and sig=0.001), sexual arousal (F=51.439 and sig=0.001), sexual satisfaction (F= 7.07 and sig=0.014), improve orgasm (F=32.18 and sig=0.001) and quality of marital relationship (F=11.34 and sig=0.001).

According to these results, it can be said that the psychotherapy protocol for sexual desire/arousal disorder has the necessary effectiveness in modulating the symptoms of this disorder and can be used as a suitable treatment option along with other psychotherapy models for this disorder.