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Background & Aim: Regarding the increase of sexual transmitted disease, high risk behaviour and unwanted pregnancy in one hand, and myth, incorrect believes and low knowledge about sexuality in the other hand, sexual health education is one the basic compartment of health promotion. The pre-marriage counseling is one of the best opportunities to reach our aim.

Methods & Materials: This was a semi-practical study. We had considered 32 case couples and 32 control couples randomly. The couples had been chosen from those, which have been contacted to the clinics of Tehran University of medical sciences. All cases had contributed to three lectures given by the researcher. The lectures were mainly based on the different aspects of sexual health, like: family plain, safe sex, different aspects of sexuality & physiologic different in men's and women’s. On the other hand the control group had taken the normal lectures, which presents in the clinics which were based on the family planning and pre-marriage experiments. Both groups (cases and controls) had been asked to fill a form six months after counseling. In this form, we had included 10 questions of sexual health and 10 demographic questions. We had finally analyzed our data by SPSS software where we had used descriptive and discriminated statistics.

Results: We have obtained a considerable difference in sexual health between the two groups by Man-Whitney test (p=0.000). The majority of case group (96.9%) showed a good sexual health whereas the most procent of control group (59.4%) had a moderate sexual health.

Conclusion: To improve the quality of pre-marriage counseling, the content of usual lectures should be modified in addition to consider more time for these lectures. The results revealed that the pre-marriage counseling enhances the sexual health that lead to marital satisfaction.

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Background & Aim: Assessment of sexual health literacy requires an appropriate tool. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a questionnaire to evaluate the level of sexual health literacy among Iranian adults.
Methods & Materials: This study was designed in two phases in Tehran during 2017-2018. In the first step, the questionnaire was developed by item generation through expert panel and literature review. In the second step, the assessment of psychometric properties of the questionnaire including face, content, and structure validity (exploratory factor analysis) and convergence criterion (using general health literacy questionnaire) were done. Reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Data were analyzed using the SPSS software version 21.
Results: The content validity indices (CVI and CVR) for all items were 0.84 and 0.81, respectively. Exploratory factor analysis identified four factors including skills of access, reading and understanding, evaluation and analysis, and application of information that explained %68.1 of the variance. Convergent validity of the questionnaire showed a correlation between the questionnaire’s dimensions and general health literacy questionnaire in the range of 0.31 to 0.70. The SHELA showed a high internal consistency reliability with Cronbach’s alpha, ranging from 0.84 to 0.94 and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), ranging from 0.90 to 0.97.
Conclusion: The psychometric assessment of the 40-item questionnaire (SHELA) indicates desirable validity and reliability. This questionnaire is suggested for assessing the level of sexual health literacy of adults in future studies.
 

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Background & Aim: Pregnant women experience physiological changes and may fear harming themselves or their fetus, leading some to avoid sexual intercourse during pregnancy. This avoidance can lead to sexual health issues. This study aimed to investigate the effect of reality therapy group counseling on the sexual function of pregnant women.
Methods & Materials: This interventional study was conducted with 80 pregnant women referred to health centers in Arak in 2019. Participants were selected through convenience sampling and randomly assigned to either the intervention group or the control group (40 participants in each group). The intervention group received eight sessions of reality therapy group counseling over four consecutive weeks, while the control group received routine prenatal care. Participants completed the standard Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) questionnaire before the intervention and four weeks after the sessions. Data was analyzed using SPSS software version 16, employing paired t-tests, independent t-tests, and the Mann-Whitney U test.
Results: There was no statistically significant difference in the mean score of sexual function between the two groups before the intervention (P=0.573). However, four weeks after the intervention, the mean score of sexual function in the intervention group (27.22±2.91) significantly increased compared to the control group (20.32±0.31) (P<0.001).
Conclusion: Implementing group sexual counseling based on the reality therapy approach can improve sexual performance among pregnant women. Thus, it is recommended that midwives employ this approach to improve the sexual function of pregnant women.