Educational requirements of human sexuality in the counseling for and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are usually stigmatizing, displaying not only medical but also social, psychological, and/or sexual consequences. Thus, it is of importance to provide STD patients with qualified counseling including three goals (1) providing comprehensive medical care; (2) providing information aimed at preventing spread of disease or reinfection; and (3) reducing social, psychological, and/or sexual sequelae. To accomplish these goals, health professionals need to be comfortable with their own sexuality, sensitive to patients' sexual concerns or problems, familiar with basic sexological knowledge, aware of their professional limitations, and warm, supportive, genuine, and empathic in the professional patient relationship. It is of further importance to not imply that sexual partners are necessarily of the opposite sex. Professionals often feel incapable of giving help as to sexual issues partly because a lack of basic knowledge and skills and partly because professionals are affected, like their patients, by taboos and constraints that make it difficult to talk about sexuality. Therefore, there is a need for including sexuality issues in professional training courses, focusing on preparing health personnel to provide patients with permission to talk about individual sexual concerns, as well as with information and specific suggestions related to a given sexual topic. Through increased awareness of one's own sexual affective attitudinal orientation combined with sexological knowledge and clinical skills, health professionals will become better counselors in human sexuality and hence in primary prevention of STDs.