title: Family therapist comfort with and willingness to discuss client sexuality.
abstract: Limited empirical information exists on whether or not marriage and family therapists are having sexuality-related discussions with their clients. When helping professionals ignore client sexuality, the potential for unintended negative outcomes increases. The researchers surveyed 175 clinical members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy to assess how their clinical training and education, their perceived sexual knowledge, and their comfort with sexual material influenced their willingness to engage in sexuality-related discussions with their clients. The results indicate that sexuality education and supervision experiences are the cornerstone for a therapist's base level of comfort. It is through sexuality education and supervision that sex knowledge is acquired and comfort levels are increased. Once comfort with sexual discussions increases, then therapists are more likely to engage in sexuality discussions with their clients.
authors.affiliation: College of Human Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-1210, USA. steve.harris@ttu.edu
authors.forename: Steven M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.forename: Kelli Wenner
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Hays
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003144:Communication Barriers; D005196:Family Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008388:Marital Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D008875:Middle Aged; D020380:Needs Assessment; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D019529:Sexuality; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States