Women's sexual health gaining new attention with medicine and therapy

A small but growing number of physicians and centers are using a different approach to diagnose and treat dysfunction.

By Amy Snow Landa, AMNews correspondent. Feb. 13, 2006.

What causes a woman to lose her desire for sex? Is it hormone levels or her relationship?

Maybe it's both, but who's going to help her sort out what she has been going through?

A sex therapist might help her improve communication with her partner but can't tell her what her hormones are doing. A physician can look at her hormone levels but rarely has time to discuss her relationship in depth. Often that leaves women who have sexual concerns lost in the middle, wondering if the problem is in their head or somewhere else.

But a handful of women's sexual health centers around the country are bringing these two spheres -- mind and body -- together.

The centers are still few and far between -- some patients fly halfway across the country to reach one -- but an increasing number have emerged.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has opened one of the newest of these centers. Its Women's Health Clinic opened in July 2005 and has been drawing patients from as far as San Francisco. The co-directors, both longtime physicians at Mayo, are an internist and a gynecologist. Together, they lead a multidisciplinary staff that includes other Mayo physicians, a sex therapist with a doctorate in psychology and registered nurses who provide nutrition and lifestyle counseling.

"I think we're unique in having a team with very strong medical grounding, plus a holistic view on health for women, plus a sex therapist with 20 years of experience," said Co-director Lynne Shuster, MD.