Cognitive factors in women hypoactive sexual desire disorder

Interest. — Hypoactive desire disorder is a widespread difficulty among women. The concept of sexual desire and its dysfunctions are difficult to define because they involve an important subjective dimension. Due to this subjective component, psychological factors, and in particular cognitive dimensions, are hypothesized to play an important role in the development and maintenance of sexual dysfunctions. The processes at hand seem complex and conflicting positions exist. They will be reviewed with the aim to clarify the different propositions related to the role of cognitive processes in play in women sexual dysfunctions, especially hypoactive sexual desire. Future targets of therapeutic interventions will accordingly be proposed. Method. — A review of the literature about cognitive factors in women sexual dysfunctions and hypoactive desire disorder will be presented. This review has been completed mostly from PsycInfo and Medline research engines, focusing on studies from last 1970s to 2011. Most of the inventoried researches used the DSM-IV-TR (2000) criteria’s to establish the diagnosis of hypoactive sexual desire disorder. Empirical studies reported used principally clinical and control samples. The main keywords were: sexual desire, sexuality, cognitive, beliefs and thoughts. Results. — In general female population, prevalence of hypoactive sexual desire ranges from 24 to 43%. Causal factors of this problematic could be biological, environmental or psychological. Among psychological factors, literature shows that negative cognitions play an important function in women sexual dysfunctions. These cognitive factors are composed of three main levels that allow information processing in sexuality and also in all domains of life. Clinicians and researchers are agree to say that women suffering from sexual dysfunctions present more negative beliefs (e.g., older people can not have sexual intercourses, sexuality can only be used for reproduction) compared to women with