Rational-emotive therapy in the treatment of erectile failure: an initial study.
Sixteen males with erectile failure, married or living with their partners, were assigned to either 12 bi-weekly sessions (6 weeks) of Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) or a 6-week waiting-list control group. Active treatment administered by a graduate student in psychology with special training in RET resulted in patients making significantly more sexual intercourse attempts, reporting significantly reduced sexual anxiety, and having a significantly higher number of successful intercourse attempts than the waiting-list control group. While 6-9 month follow-up revealed that most treated patients had fallen back toward the pretest baseline (lower rates of successful intercourse), group means as a whole were still significantly higher than pretreatment intercourse success rates. The significance of these findings are discussed.
D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000628:therapy; D007172:Erectile Dysfunction / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D011617:Psychotherapy, Rational-Emotive / Q000379:methods*; D012725:Sexual Behavior