Danilo Díaz Granados read: International survey finds over 40 per cent of men have experienced “post-coital dysphoria”

Immediately after consensual and satisfactory sex, most people report feeling positive, content and psychologically close to their partner. But for some, it has the opposite effect, leaving them tearful and irritable for anything from a few minutes to a few hours. Commonly known as the “post-sex blues”, psychologists call it “post-coital dysphoria” (PCD) and until recently they had only studied it in women.

For example, in 2015, Robert D Schweitzer at the Queensland University of Technology led a study of 230 Australian female students, in which 46 per cent reported experiencing PCD at some point in their lives, and about 2 per cent said they experienced it regularly.

Now masters student Joel Maczkowiack and Schweitzer have published – in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy – the first ever study to show that some men suffer from PCD, too.

The researchers conducted an anonymous online survey of 1,208 men aged 18 to 81, from 78 different countries. Most were in a relationship that had lasted for at least a year.

Forty-one per cent of these men reported having experienced PCD at some point in their lifetime, and for 20 per cent, it had happened in the four weeks preceding the study. Just over 4 per cent reported experiencing PCD regularly. The descriptions of how PCD feels included, “I don’t want to be touched and I want to be left alone”; “I feel unsatisfied, annoyed and very fidgety”; and being “emotionless and empty”.

The survey also assessed current symptoms of depression and anxiety and past sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Current psychological distress was associated with PCD, but it was not a major predictor (which was also the case in the study of women). Childhood sexual abuse was also linked to PCD but, again, as for women, it was a minor factor in explaining the results. For the men, sexual dysfunction was implicated in some cases, but it certainly wasn’t a major risk factor. Exactly what accounts for PCD in many people is not clear. It has been suggested that, for some, at least, the symptoms might be caused by the fall in levels of endorphins and certain hormones that peaked during orgasm.

As the first study to show that men do experience PCD, this work challenges common assumptions about sex always being pleasurable for men, the researchers say. “Males who experience PCD, and their partners, may find it comforting to know that they are not alone in their experience and that negative postcoital experiences may simply reflect normal variation in [the] human sexual response,” Maczkowiack and Schweitzer write.

—Postcoital Dysphoria: Prevalence and Correlates among Males

Emma Young (@EmmaELYoung) is Staff Writer at BPS Research Digest

View Source

Danilo Díaz Granados read: “Skunk” Cannabis Disrupts Brain Networks – But Effects Are Blocked In Other Strains

By Matthew Warren Over the past decade, neuroimaging studies have provided new insights into how psychoactive drugs alter the brain’s activity. Psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms – has been found to reduce activity in brain regions involved in depression , for example, while MDMA seems to augment brain activity for positive memories . Now a new study sheds some light into what’s going in the brain when people smoke cannabis – and it turns out that the effects can be quite different depending on the specific strain of the drug. The research, published recently in the Journal of Psychopharmacology , suggests that cannabis disrupts particular brain networks – but some strains can buffer against this disruption. Cannabis contains two major active ingredients: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). THC is responsible for many of the drug’s psychoactive effects, such as the feeling of being stoned and the anxiety that people sometimes feel, as well as ...

Danilo Díaz Granados read: Beyond the invisible gorilla – inattention can also render us numb and anosmic (without smell)

By Emma Young It’s well-known that we can miss apparently obvious objects in our visual field if other events are hogging our limited attention. The same has been shown for sounds: in a nod to Daniel Simons’ and Christopher Chabris’ famous gorilla/basketball study that demonstrated “inattentional blindness”, distracted participants in the first “inattentional deafness” study failed to hear a man walking through an auditory scene for 19 seconds saying repeatedly “I am a gorilla”. Now, two new studies separately show that a very similar effect occurs in relation to touch ( inattentional numbness ) and to smell ( inattentional anosmia ). Sandra Murphy and Polly Dalton (a co-author on the inattentional deafness paper) at Royal Holloway, University of London report in the journal Cognition on inattentional numbness. They wanted to go beyond the way we rapidly tune out ongoing tactile stimulation, like the sensation of our clothes, and explore what happens when we’re tou...

Danilo Díaz Granados read: A New Study Has Investigated Who Watched The ISIS Beheading Videos, Why, And What Effect It Had On Them

By Emma Young In the summer of 2014, two videos were released that shocked the world. They showed the beheadings, by ISIS, of two American journalists – first, James Foley and then Steven Sotloff. Though the videos were widely discussed on TV, print and online news, most outlets did not show the full footage. However, it was not difficult to find links to the videos online. At the time, Sarah Redmond at the University of California, Irvine and her colleagues were already a year into a longitudinal study to assess psychological responses to the Boston Marathon Bombing, which happened in April 2013. They realised that they could use the same nationally representative sample of US adults to investigate what kind of person chooses to watch an ISIS beheading – and why. Their findings now appear in a paper published in American Psychologist . By late spring 2013, the researchers had recruited 4,675 adults online, and assessed their mental health, TV-watching habits, demographics,...

Danilo Díaz Granados

Search This Blog