Accepting mental health conditions as a real threat has been an ongoing battle. While some limit their acceptance of the disorders only if they see the patient losing their mind completely and some on the other hand find it difficult to believe that something like a ‘mood disorder’ could count in being unwell.
You would be surprised to know that a mental or psychological disorder plays a major role in causing decline in your sex drive, sensation, and sexual performance. Your body starts giving out signs and symptoms indicating something is not right within you.
People use words like ‘stress’, ‘depression’, ‘anxiety’ so casually without realising how all those terms are the reason people don’t step out of their rooms. It is important to understand that humans are sensitive beings, and their experiences, their surroundings and their upbringing plays a huge role in maintaining mental health. Many people suffering from mental health issues have a troubled or traumatic childhood that has affected them to this extent.
Suffering from a mental disorder affects your body physically in multiple ways causing either diminished feelings of excitement or no response to stimulation. A few mental health disorders that affect your sexual life are:
- Trauma/PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder): Stress of any kind gets the better of you and affects your relationship, this stress may not necessarily be from an abuse or assault but from anything like stress at work or stress from a traumatic event. It could lead to disinterest in the activity, resulting in conditions that cause pain on engaging in it. Feelings of arousal could trigger anger, fear or fight or flight response in you.
- Depression: Signs of depression are fatigue, tiredness, disinterest and tendency to either become insomniac or oversleep. All of this can hamper normal functioning of your sexual life. Depression can cause sexual dysfunction due to the antidepressants.
- Anxiety: Close to 75% of people suffering from Panic Disorder and other anxiety disorders like Social Anxiety or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder(OCD) suffer from sexual dysfunction. Anxiety disorders are exhausting conditions that can leave you with no strength and drive. Basically, you are consumed by anxiety, which affects your sexual life.
- Eating Disorders: The production of estrogen and testosterone requires healthy fats, which helps in gaining libido, when you suffer from eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia, your body does not have the adequate nourishment to produce these sex hormones, which results in feelings of sexual anxiety, avoidance and dysfunction.
- BIpolar Disorder: People suffering from BPD, struggle with swings of extreme moods, from extreme maniac, high to extreme sadness or depression, which can affect their relationships and sexual life.
- Sexual Aversion disorder: Sexual aversion is a conditioned response to situations that trigger past experiences. Sexual aversion appears in the form of diminished drive, or interest in act of intimacy. The human body is very sensitive and if it suffers from a condition, it gives out signs for you to understand something is wrong and should be treated. So is the case with mental health disorders too, if you pay attention, you’ll know something is going wrong somewhere that is causing trouble to your entire body functioning.