[An exploratory study of psychiatric patients' needs and nurses' current practices related to sexual counseling]

The purpose of this study was to explore psychiatric patient needs and current nursing practice with regard to sexual counseling and to understand differences in individual patient characteristics. A total of 182 psychiatric patients and 44 psychiatric nurses were purposively selected from a mental hospital in northern Taiwan. Results revealed that 63.2% of subjects had not been given sexuality information and 81.9% had not been approached by nurses to discuss such issues. While 35.2% of study patients treated sexual issues as psychological or private issues that should only be discussed with psychologists, 33.5% expressed a desire to discuss issues related to sexuality with nurses. Even so, most subjects preferred to discuss sexual issues in a private way, and asked for assistance from same-gender professionals. Also, patients with higher education levels placed greater attention on the counseling topics of how to express sexual needs and the impacts of mental illness on sexuality. With regard to nurses participating in the study, female nurses had a generally more conservative attitude toward sexual values than males. Those who were married, older, or had received continuing sexuality education were more comfortable with conducting sexual counseling. Those with clinical experience and continuing sexuality education were able to take more responsibility and a more professional role in sexual counseling. Data collected on the specific subject groups in order to provide effective comparisons can be employed to refine current sexual counseling training programs for nurses in order to improve patient care.