Sexual Satisfaction, Sexual Communication and Quality of Life in Spouses of Patients with Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder can be traumatic for both patients and patient's partners. Hence, partner's quality of life, sexual communication and satisfactions are important areas to investigate. However, there have been problems with past attempts to identify the determinants of marital satisfaction in bipolar patients and their partners. There seems to be little research regarding the ways in which Indian women's sexualities are influenced by their socialization, culture, religion, and personal experience. The present research was aimed to study sexual satisfaction, sexual communication and quality of life of spouses of patients with bipolar disorder. The sample constitutes of 30 spouses of bipolar patients (experimental group) and 30 spouses of normal population(control group). The study was a crosssectional between-group study design. Data were collected using General Health Questionnaire(GHQ-12), Index of Sexual Satisfaction, Dyadic Sexual Communication Scale, WHO-Quality of Life. Following the inclusion and exclusion criteria after taking consent from the participants, data were collected. Results revealed that spouses of bipolar patients were less sexually satisfied when compared with the normal group. Most of the spouses feel burden when they are caring for their wards with major mental health problems which leads to decreased quality of life.