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What Is Sexual Pain? - Dr. Parish (VIDEO)

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Dr. Parish describes sexual pain.

Dr. Parish:
Sexual pain is a condition in a man or a woman that’s related to sexual activity. It can be related to intercourse before with stimulation during or after intercourse. Some women have pain that’s unrelated to intercourse and that often has terms like vulvadenia which is pain in the vulva or more specifically if it’s around the opening of the vagina, called the vestibulitis, and those conditions don’t necessarily have to do with pain actually during the active sexual activity.

There’s also a term called non-coital sexual pain which talks about or really speaks to the idea that women have pain with sexual activities that don’t necessarily relate to coitus, manual oral stimulation, self-stimulation, and it can be an array of types of pain, it can be burning, it can be dull, it can be stabbing.

Some people associate the term sexual pain with something called disparunia which is actually the pain during coitus. Disparunia has to do with the actual act of coitus or intercourse. It’s also associated with changes in the vaginal tissue as with menopause or other estrogen-depleted conditions you can get, what’s called atrophic vaginitis or vaginal dryness that is hormonally driven and can cause disparunia or sexual pain during sexual activity.

About Dr. Sharon Parish, M.D.:
Dr. Sharon Parish, M.D., is Associate Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York. She is also the Director of Psychosocial Training at Montefiore Medical Center, The University Hospital for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Dr. Parish has developed an array of curricula addressing fundamental areas in psychosocial medicine, such as interviewing and empathy skills, psychiatric diagnosis and management, and patient education and compliance, as well as specialized areas such as motivational interviewing, substance abuse disorders, and women’s mental health.

Visit Dr. Parish at Albert Einstein College of Medicine

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