SEASON 9, EPISODE 1: What do we mean by sexual health and sexual wellbeing?

I want to ask you the question, what do we mean by good sexual health? That's a great start.

So for me, good sexual health means being free from concerns and issues that can come about in relation to our sexual experiences and sexual behaviour.

So I see it as principally four things that we want to try and avoid or have good experiences in.

The first thing is sexually transmitted infections.

We want to try and avoid those if we can.

And the main way to do that is to use condoms.

We are wanting to avoid issues around fertility and contraception.

So we want people to have pregnancies when they choose to, rather than a pregnancy that comes about, you know, maybe as a surprise or unplanned.

And we want people to have good access to contraception and we want people to be able to make choices around their fertility.

The third thing is around sexual violence.

So we want people to be free from sexual harassment, from coercion, from experiences that are involving violence and in the sexual encounters.

And then the fourth thing is sexual function.

So when people have sexual experiences, we want them to be able to enjoy them.

We want them to feel free from feelings like anxiety.

We certainly want them to be pain free.

We want people to feel that they've got an experience.

an interest in having sex and that they enjoy it, that they can get an erection if they have a penis and just that they can respond in sexual encounters.

So it's those four things, avoiding STIs, fertility and contraception, avoiding not being exposed to sexual violence and then being able to respond and enjoy sexual experiences.

Would you be able to talk about the difference between sexual health and sexual well-being? Yeah, sure.

So

sexual health is something that people are probably more familiar with.

Sexual wellbeing, people are probably less familiar with that term.

They may never have even come across it before.

And one of the issues with sexual wellbeing is that it can mean very different things to different people.

So when we use or when we hear the term sexual wellbeing, we might be thinking of quite different things.