Perceived Barriers and Needs in Accessing Sexual Health Services for Iranian Couples: A Qualitative Research

Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) and access to related services are the most important issues and are part of reproductive health rights. Therefore, this study was designed and conducted to explain the perceived barriers and needs in accessing sexual health services for Iranian couples.

We conducted this study on 14 subjects at the Navab Health Center in Isfahan and Behsa Counseling Center in Tehran from November 2015 to December 2016 by common qualitative content analysis approach through semi‑structured interviews.

The results show that sub‑subcategories “Therapist’s Individual Traits” and “Specialized Skills of Therapist” formed “Need for Access to a Professional Therapist” subcategory and sub‑subcategories “Provide specialized problem‑based treatments” and “Rapid and Timely Therapy of Sexual Problems” formed the “Need for Timely and Comprehensive Access” subcategory and these two subcategories formed the main category of “Need to access a specialized, comprehensive and timely sexual health services system.” Furthermore, sub‑subcategories of “Failure to Prioritize Sexual Matters” and “Lack of sexual awareness” formed the “Individual Challenges of Search for Sexual Health Services” subcategory, and sub‑subcategories of “Sexual Problems are a Taboo” and “Lack of awareness of the existence of sex therapists and sexual health service centers” formed “Sociocultural Challenges to Access Sexual Health Services” subcategory. Two subcategories formed the main category of “Obstacles to Access Efficient and Proper Sexual Health Services.”

The explored couple’s experiences demonstrated that the need to receive timely and comprehensive specialized sexual health services because of the obstacles to access is not provided.