Men, Depression and Sex

2016-08-31

It is an incredibly complex condition which brings with it a whole slew of emotional, mental and physical symptoms with it. For men and women both, part of the problem can revolve around their sexuality – and this in turn can cause problems in a relationship at the time when the depressed person most needs the support.  Fortunately, there are ways to help treat this particular problem and restore intimacy and pleasure to a relationship.

Depression and Male Sexuality

It is common for both men and women to experience sexual problems as part of their depression – but the ways in which this presents itself can be different.  Healthline notes that in men, depression will often express itself as feelings of low-esteem, anxiety and guilt and this, in turn, can cause problems with erectile dysfunction, delayed orgasm, premature ejaculation or just a loss of interest in sex itself.

There is still a lot we just don’t know about exactly how depression affects the brain. But according to Net Doctor, researchers have learned that the chemical changes which take place when someone has this condition can lead to an increase in emotional withdrawal and low energy levels so that activities like sex, which require a connection to your partner as well as physical energy to perform, can become a challenge.  This can be hurtful for the person’s partner and make them feel unwanted or unloved, putting a strain on the relationship that can, in itself, be difficult to deal with.

To make matters worse, many antidepressants are notorious for their side effect of causing sexual dysfunction or loss of interest.  Included in this group are MAOI inhibitors, SSRI’s and SSNRI’s and both tetracyclic and tricyclic antidepressants. 

What to Do

So the long and short of it is, both depression itself and some of the treatments for depression can both put a damper on a guy’s sex life. So what are some solutions to the problem?

Get the Treatment You Need

Depression is not a choice that people make – and it is usually not a problem that goes away by itself. If you have not yet been diagnosed, talk to your doctor about the symptoms you are having and get started on a plan of care that involves the combination of medications, therapy and lifestyle changes that are right for you.

If you are already being treated for depression and suspect that your anti-depressants might be putting the kybosh on your sex life, find out if you can switch medications. While it might take a little time to take effect, there are some drugs which do not seem to effect one’s libido, including Wellbutrin and Remeron.

Exercise

Both Healthline and Everyday Health recommend regular exercise – preferably with your partner – as part of a program to help reconnect sexually. First, it gives you and your partner time together doing something enjoyable and this alone can be good for a relationship. It also helps to release feel-good chemicals like endorphins that help fight depression naturally and keeps you in good shape so that you feel good about yourself and the way you look. All this can go a long way to enhancing your sex life.

Take Your Time

According to Everyday Health, sex therapist Dr. Sandra Caron also has a few tips for couples who are struggling to overcome the barrier that depression has placed on their sex lives.  She recommends, first of all, that couples engage in more foreplay and other physical expressions of intimacy – hand holding, caressing, massage – before engaging in intercourse itself.  Depression tends to slow down all responses, so taking this extra time to achieve arousal can help enhance the pleasure for both partners.  She also recommends the use, if needed, of estrogen creams or lubricants and even erotica (like lingerie or sexy movies) to help spark the mood.

Open Up

Probably the most important advice for men who are trying to reconnect with their partner sexually is to open up and communicate with your partner. This can be more difficult for men to do in general, but is even more of a challenge when it comes to talking about intimate issues like sexuality, desire and arousal. But being honest about how you are feeling and letting your partner know that it is the depression that is a problem and not a loss of interest or a loss of love can be an incredibly powerful way to overcome this challenges and get support from your loved one at a time when you need it the most.  Also, partners can be more understanding and supportive if they understand more about what is going on – otherwise, it is easy to interpret a low mood or lack of responsiveness as being hostile or unloving.

In short, depression is a difficult condition with a whole slew of symptoms that go far beyond just feelings of sadness or being blue.  And when depression begins to affect a person’s sexuality, this in turn can lead to a strain on intimate partner relationships.  However, while there are no quick solutions to this problem, getting on a treatment program that is tailored to someone’s individual needs as well as exercising regularly, spending time with a partner to engage in more foreplay and simply opening up and talking about the problem can all help to reignite the sexual spark in a relationship – and hopefully make the battle against depression that much easier.

About Dr. Brian W. Wu

Do boys know more about sex than girls?

BY SUZANNA PILLAY – 28 AUGUST 2016 @ 3:22 PM

WHAT do Malaysian youths know about sex? Not a whole lot, according to the findings of a survey on Malaysian Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH). The little that they know about SRH is gleaned from a hodgepodge of sources, including school, the Internet and friends.

Forty-two per cent believe that withdrawal before ejaculation is effective protection against unplanned pregnancy. Thirty-five per cent believe a woman cannot become pregnant when she has sex for the first time. The survey also reveals that boys know more about SRH than girls.

For instance, when asked whether standing up during sex will prevent pregnancies, 51 per cent of the female respondents said they do not know, compared with 20 per cent of the male respondents. Fifty-one per cent do not know that a woman can get pregnant during menstruation.

Many respondents do not know how to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections and 25 per cent believe that protection is not required when there is mutual trust between partners.

SRH knowledge-driven programmes are focused on helping youths to understand their bodies, protect themselves and inculcate respect for everyone, but 25 per cent of those surveyed have the impression that SRH education is about teaching them how to have sex.

However, the Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) says the findings of the survey may not be representative of young people in Malaysia as “we must keep in mind that the survey results are based on a limited pool of respondents”.

A WAO spokesman says it is likely that boys are better informed about sex because it is a greater taboo for girls. “In Malaysian society, girls are expected to keep their virginity, abstinence is the only option that is encouraged and sex before marriage, let alone early sexual activity, is not openly acknowledged.

These factors may result in girls being less educated about sex than boys.” All Women’s Action Society (AWAM) programme officer Choong Yong Yi says it is not enough to only promote abstinence to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.

“It is much better to implement comprehensive and age appropriate sex education for teens where they are taught about consent, peer refusal skills, safe sex and how to value their bodies. Contraceptives must also be made available.”

Her colleague, information communications officer Evelynne Gomez says the taboo over sex education must be broken. “It is a big taboo in Malaysia and it is going to be a difficult issue to approach, but looking at how unsure young people are in the survey, there should be more comprehensive sex education for youths on their sexual and reproductive health.

“There’s scarcely any information on sexually transmitted diseases and many sexually active youths would rather not deal with the issue.” The survey found that 11 per cent of sexually active respondents have had a sexually transmitted infection and 24 per cent did not seek treatment.

Federation of Reproductive Health Associations Malaysia (FRHAM) executive director Mary Pang says the organisation has been advocating sex education for a long time. “In fact, the topic of consent is a chapter on its own in our Life’s Journey module, which is a manual on sexual and reproductive health for adolescents.

“We use the module in all our training sessions at FRHAM centres, as well as in outreach sessions.”

In the chapter on consent, titled Are you ready for a sexual relationship?, Pang says the key messages are:

• Every right comes with responsibility.

• Make an informed choice. Think, before you act. Don’t just do it.

• Sexual relationships should be pleasurable and not under pressure.

• Pregnancy should be intended and desired.

Read More : http://www.nst.com.my/news/2016/08/168825/do-boys-know-more-about-sex-girls

We don’t want no sex education

In the age of the Internet, gender, sexuality, puberty and sexual health remain taboo topics in schools and homes.-Vangmayi Parakala

Adolescents using tools made by the Thoughtshop Foundation. Photo: Thoughtshop Foundation

During a workshop on puberty awareness targeted at 10- to 12-year-old boys, sex educator Anju Kishinchandani was faced with a curious situation. When they were talking about the growth of pubic hair, one of her students thought he would have to stop going to school. Perplexed, she asked him why, and he said that since he wore shorts to school, hair might grow out from under them.

“We take for granted that the child would know things. But (puberty) is completely new for them. It can cause so much worry,” says Kishinchandani, who conducts workshops in Mumbai schools and neighbourhoods through her company, Out of the Box. These include a “My Body is Mine”, a child-friendly workshop for five- to eight-year-olds, and “Let’s Talk”, a complete sex education session for 13- to 15-year-olds, designed to encourage informed decision making.

Kishinchandani and other gender and sexual health educators have a tough job—in rural and urban India, social and cultural stigmas make it difficult to discuss sex, gender and sexual health issues with children and young adults.

A report on sexuality education in India by the Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, an international organization, noted that “most schools—private and public-affiliated state boards of secondary education—don’t have any form of sexuality education in their curricula”. The Adolescence Education Programme (AEP) launched by the government in 2005 ran into trouble with state governments and didn’t quite take off. Three years ago, in a vision document for education in Delhi schools that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Harsh Vardhan prepared in the run-up to assembly elections, he stated that “So-called ‘sex education’ (is) to be banned”. A year later, Harsh Vardhan, who became Union health minister for a while, added that he “wholeheartedly supported pedagogy that is scientific and culturally acceptable”.

The magnitude of the problem is all too visible. According to Unicef’s “The State Of World’s Children, 2016” report, India’s adolescent population (10- to 19-years-old) is over 250 million. That’s a lot of children who have to rely on misinformation, misdirected peers, pornographic material that is sexist and demeaning, and risqué Bollywood and regional cinema, to find out about the birds and the bees. Of them, the report reveals, around 71.5% of adolescent girls and 88.2% of adolescent boys use mass media.

There are, however, a handful of non- governmental organizations, parents and educators keen to hold constructive and informative conversations with children. Delhi-based not-for-profit Talking About Reproductive and Sexual Health Issues (Tarshi), for instance, has been running a helpline for sexual and reproductive health since 1996. It conducts workshops, issues publications, holds e-learning courses on sexuality, and engages with organizations to highlight the importance of such learning for young people.

“There has been a general denial of access to information on sexuality and bodies and this is especially acute with regard to younger women and girls,” says Vinita Sahasranaman, director of programmes and advocacy at the YP Foundation, a youth organization set up in 2002 to influence policy on issues of gender and sexuality, art, health and education.

The Thoughtshop Foundation, set up in 1993, creates communication tools for those working on issues like gender equity and adolescent health. It is run by Himalini Varma, a designer from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, along with fellow designer Santayan Sengupta.

Over the years, Varma has found that well-meaning health workers, even those with decades of on-ground experience, are uncomfortable discussing topics of reproductive health with adolescent girls. The problem is a complex one, tinged with social taboos, assumptions that children will figure things out eventually and, paradoxically, that they aren’t old enough for this information.

Their kits are picture-intensive, with a storyline and easily relatable characters designed to address children from differing educational backgrounds. Their two adolescent health kits—“Champa” for girls, and “Shankar” for boys—which initially came out in Bengali, are also available in Telugu and Hindi now. “We design our kits keeping in mind not just the end recipient (the children), but also the grass-roots users (trainers),” says Varma. She recounts a session when a card with the picture of a teenage girl holding a little baby fostered a discussion on issues of child marriage and teenage pregnancy, as the adolescent girls related it to events in their own lives.

The YP Foundation follows a “peer educator model” for its target audience—marginalized young people, in institutional homes and government schools. “We induct and train older young adults, say 15- or 16-year-olds, to (conduct) sessions with us. This is premised on the comfort level that a peer group shares. We (have) observed that children clarified misconceptions around menstruation with less hesitation with peers than with much older adults,” Sahasranaman says.

“The backlash begins only with contentious issues like shame around menstruation, education on gender relations, sexually transmitted infections (STI), or contraceptives,” she says.

Despite this, sexual health educators like to keep things real. Gaurav Kumar, 22, currently a postgraduate student at Delhi University, facilitated sex-education sessions at a private New Delhi school for children of classes IX-XII in the last academic year. His sessions brought up several topics—sexual and reproductive health, awareness of the rights of sexual minorities, the relation between law and sexuality, the issue of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and notions of “natural” versus “unnatural” sex. Kumar’s programme at the school also included organizing sessions with activists and film-makers such as Pramada Menon.

“The focus was to make the students more aware and to sensitize them to these issues, even as they are growing up. To do this, I would also bring in pop-culture references, especially stories of celebrities that the kids would read about often. Because the challenge was to make the topics interesting and relatable in a non-awkward way,” says Kumar.

To keep pace with India’s children—literally, the country’s future—sexual health experts are constantly and rapidly modifying their ways of reaching out and providing healthy, much needed information. Regardless of whether they work in rural or urban areas, trainers say the children are brimming with curiosity and ready for information. The question is, are we willing to provide it to them?