Why the Sexual Tipping Point® Model?

Abstract

The editorial thread of Current Sexual Health Reports aspires to cultivate a biopsychosocial-behavioral and cultural perspective for the reader that also results in more healthcare professionals embracing the importance of a transdisciplinary approach that integrates counseling with current and emerging medical/surgical techniques for the treatment of male and female sexual disorders (Perelman in Curr Sex Health Rep, 7(1):1–2, 2015). Supporting a related goal in 2011, the author founded the MAP Education & Research Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity dedicated to educating healthcare providers that sexual health is more than just biology. The Fund’s website, mapedfund.org, was just launched in order to offer the resources of its Sexual Tipping Point (STP) model for free! It remains critical to advance a model that would help students, professionals, and the public alike understand that sex is always both “Mental And Physical.” All the biopsychosocial-behavioral and cultural models of sexual dysfunction provide a compelling argument for sexual medicine treatments that integrate sex counseling and medical and/or surgical treatments. Given the choice of so many different biopsychosocial-cultural models, why embrace the Sexual Tipping Point model? Perhaps, the greatest advantage of the STP model is the ease with which it provides clinicians as well as their patients (and their partners) with a common sense explanation of sexual problems and potential solutions. At Weill Cornell Medicine, when contemplating the clinical need for understanding etiology, diagnosis, and treatment, we find the Sexual Tipping Point both helpful and convenient.