Grant: Doctoral: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships

This project will happen at the University of Ottawa, under the supervision of Dr. Peggy J. Kleinplatz and Dr. Timothy Ramsay. Cancer and its treatments are known to cause sexual problems. A pleasurable, satisfying sex life is an important aspect of quality of life, including for cancer patients/survivors. However, sexual problems are rarely addressed by the health teams that work with this population. From 2005-2013, the Optimal Sexual Experiences Research Team of the University of Ottawa studied couples whose sex lives grew richer over time to explore how to bring about optimal sexual experiences, even with aging, chronic illness and disabilities. Beginning in 2013, our team used these findings to develop an 8-week, 16-hour group couples therapy approach to help couples with complex sexual problems. The first phases of our research showed that our therapy could help couples improve their sex lives, even when delivered remotely during COVID-19. The literature suggests that our approach, which includes couples, involves several sessions and focuses on sexuality, could be well-suited for this population. For my Ph.D., I will be looking at whether our approach can help couples facing cancer, despite the sexual problems that come with cancer and its treatments. Therapists will see clients in groups of 4-6 couples, where at least one partner has or has had cancer. We will continue to welcome LGBTQ participants, who have often been excluded from this type of research. Couples will fill out questionnaires at four time points: during the first clinical assessment, just before entering therapy, just after therapy is completed and six months later as a follow-up. We will perform statistical analyses to look at differences between these time points to see if our approach is effective. As part of this study, we have also developed a new questionnaire to measure sexual fulfillment. We will also use this sample of participants to evaluate the quality of our new instrument.