Anthesis

Patricia Pascoal (PI)

COFAC - ULusófona (Leader)
Universidade do Porto

The Anthesis project is an intervention through an online platform aiming to eliminate sexual distress. It is theoretically based on the transdiagnostic approach to emotional disorders. We propose to develop an online intervention because sexual distress is often perceived as stigmatizing, which inhibits the request for clinical help and negatively impacts people's well-being and relationships. This project is innovative as clinical research in sexual dysfunction has systematically ignored online intervention and neglected sexual distress as an outcome variable, and aims to answer the overall research question: Is an intervention delivered online targeting transdiagnostic factors in order to decrease sexual distress acceptable, feasible and practical? Driven by both theory and empirical evidence on the comorbidity between emotional disorders and sexual dysfunctions, this project will focus on sexual distress (as a dependent variable) and the independent variables that, based on the literature review, will be the target of the clinical intervention: neuroticism, perfectionism, emotional dysregulation, worry and rumination, and psychological flexibility.