The IPM is the leading organisation for training doctors in psychosexual medicine in the UK. It has a unique approach recognising that sexual difficulties are rarely purely physical or emotional in origin. Through training, doctors learn to consider mind and body together in treating their patients.
IPM trained doctors work in a variety of medical fields, where they encounter patients with sexual problems in the course of their work - general practice, gynaecology, family planning, sexual health, urology and rehabilitation medicine.
What sorts of problems do IPM trained doctors commonly see?
It is difficult to generalize, as every patient is unique - although two patients may appear to have the same problem on the surface, the reasons behind the difficulty will be different in each case.
In men:
- Difficulty getting or maintaining an erection
- Loss of interest in sex
- Problems with ejaculation — where it happens too quickly, slowly or not at all.
In women:
- Loss of interest in sex
- Difficulty becoming aroused or achieving orgasm
- Painful sex
- Inability to have penetrative sex
There are some sexual problems that are not generally treated by IPM doctors
- Where the sexual problem is part of a larger overall problem - e.g. psychiatric illness
- Illegal sexual behaviours such as paedophilia
- Gender dysphoria - where someone believes they have been born the wrong sex.
