In this unprecedented four-volume set, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, educators, and clergy join forces to present information vital for sexual health. Topics candidly discussed include the meaning of sexual health, the effects of ignorance or neglect, and the role of love, touch, and communication. Doctors explain the roles of physical systems, while psychologists and members of the clergy detail the roles of religion, culture, and parental or family beliefs in spurring or squashing sexual health. State-of-the-art treatments and research are also featured. Each volume includes a chapter on how to talk with a doctor, therapist, or patient about sexual health.

Americans feel free to tell medical doctors of health ills from headaches to hemorrhoids, and to tell psychologists about mental problems from depression to delusions. Yet, there is one area that affects both physical and mental health most people don’t discuss with either doctor or psychologist: sexual health. According to a survey published by the American Medical Association, 43 percent of women and 31 percent of men in the United States experience some form of sexual dysfunction, problems are largely hidden, and so exacerbated. Doctors don’t initiate the topic with patients; neither do most psychologists aside from trained sex therapists. The problems might not even be rooted in disorders commonly understood as illness. As officials at the World Health Organization have defined it, sexual health is more than the absence of disease. It is a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being related to sexuality.