Evidences of an Implemented Training Program in Consensual and Responsible Sexual Relations for People with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

(1) Background: While there is a growing awareness of the rights of individuals with intellectual disabilities, very limited progress has been made in supporting these people to create and maintain intimate and personal relationships. (2) Methods: This paper reports the results from a program aimed at promoting responsible and consensual sexual relations of adults with intellectual disabilities. Of the 44 participants, 31.8% were women and 68.2% were men aged 22 to 67 years. Pre and post measurements regarding the attitudes toward sexual relations were taken, and difficulty and discrimination indexes were calculated. (3) Results: Statistically significant improvements were identified in the overall measurements, as were they for the domains of privacy, safety, and respect. The difficulty index changed from 0.67 to 0.79 in a pre-post assessment, denoting more positive attitudes. This and other results support the relevance and usefulness of the intervention program and encourage further intervention efforts.

Analysis of the Differential Efficacy of the Reduced Version Over the Extended Version of an Affective-Sexual Education Program for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities

“…For all these reasons, intervention proposals have recently emerged aimed at covering the key knowledge, attitudes and skills they need to know in order to develop a healthy sexual life (Aceldo et al, 2006 ; Gutiérrez-Bermejo et al, 2021 ; López, 2011 ; Navarro et al, 2010 ; Parra & Oliva, 2015 ; Rodriguez-Mayoral et al, 2006 ; van den Toren et al, 2021 ). Ideally, such proposals should understand sexuality as an aspect that transcends genitality and involves interaction with other people, therefore, including training on sexual communication and clearly establishing the boundaries of what is public and what is private in their specific cultural context will be essential, with special emphasis on indicators of sexual abuse and offering clear models of autoerotic sexual practices or sexual exchange (Gil-Llario et al, 2019 ).…”

The Right to Sexuality, Reproductive Health, and Found a Family for People with Intellectual Disability: A Systematic Review

“…Five studies were included [ 129 , 130 , 131 , 132 , 133 ]. Spain stands out as the country with the highest number of interventions ( n = 2.).…”

“…Another empirical study [ 132 ] carried out with people with ID offered evidence demonstrating the usefulness of a brief intervention program to improve the knowledge and attitudes toward consensual and responsible sexual relationships.…”

Sexual Assistance for People with Intellectual Disabilities: Proposal for a Service Delivery Model

“…Those with intellectual disabilities have less access to normalized environments where they can develop their sexuality in a satisfactory way. They have less or biased knowledge about sexuality and they also present a deficit in skills to provide themselves with pleasure or to provide pleasure to others [39,40]. In addition, those who present high support needs may also have functional difficulties such as motor difficulties to respond to their sexual arousal satisfactorily.…”