Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Background & Objective: Premature ejaculation is a common sexual problem, but not the most common reason for referral for treatment of sexual problems. The men suffering from premature ejaculation are afflicted with sexual self-concept problem. Feeling to have premature ejaculation causes men to lowers their self-respect and results in their concern on effect of this problem on the quality of their interpersonal relation. The purpose of present study is to investigate effect of integrated couple therapy on sexual self-concept and premature ejaculation in men.
Methods: This study employed a two group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design. Purposive sampling was used to recruit 30 persons from among the men referring and complaining for premature ejaculation to the physicians and psychologists of treatment centers in Neishabour. They were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups in equal numbers. The experimental group received integrated couple consultation intervention, and the control group was in the waiting list. The research instruments were the short form of Sexual Self-concept Criterion developed by Rostosky, Dekhtryar, Cupp, and Anderman (MSSQ-short form) (2008) and Premature Ejaculation Assessment Criterion developed by Symonds, Roblin, Hard and Althof (PEDT) (2003). Analysis of data were accomplished in two levels. In the descriptive level, average statistics and standard deviation were used, and in inferential level, variance analysis method with repeated measurement was used.
Results: The results indicated a meaningful difference in degree of sexual self-concept between the men who had received integrated couple therapy intervention, and the men in control group (p<0.001). Moreover, the men treated with integrated couple therapy had a meaningful difference with the men in control group in their view of premature ejaculation (p<0.001). Considering the high average score of sexual self-concept and premature ejaculation in post-test, and follow-up in the test group comparing with the control group, we should say that integrated couple therapy decreases of premature ejaculation and improves sexual self-concept. Moreover, the scores of follow-up stage did not have any meaningful difference with post-test stage. Therefore, we should say integrated couple therapy intervention has had stable results.
Conclusion: Taking into account the findings of present research, we could conclude that integrated couple therapy could be effective in improvement of premature ejaculation, sexual self-concept and decrease in premature ejaculation in men. In fact, sexual self-concept could be one of the psychological factors in appearance and continuation of premature ejaculation. Therefore, improvement of sexual self-concept could be also result in the improvement of premature ejaculation. It seems that improvement of sexual self-concept through overcoming couple problems and couple mobility decreases stress and pressure on interpersonal relations, and decreases premature ejaculation.