Teaching safer sex in a long-term psychiatric setting

The trend toward normalizing life in mental health institutions poses a challenge to the facility's staff in the area of sexual relations among clients. In addition to their other duties, nurses now are being asked to discuss sexual feelings with the clients as well as teach sex education, AIDS information, and safer-sex practices. Such programs need to begin with retraining of staff and institution-wide classes to determine the clients' knowledge base. One model program experienced initial resistance among staff and patients, but worked well after an adjustment period. Different methods were used successfully on the female admission unit, the addiction unit, and the rehabilitation and release unit.