Lets talk about sex.... - Auckland District Health Board

The respondents who found the discussion neither helpful nor unhelpful tended to be those who
indicated that their sexual orientation was not really that relevant to their mental health care or
issues. This finding was evident across all sexual orientation identities (106 participants).
The 5 respondents who experienced the discussion about sexuality as unhelpful or very unhelpful
gave a variety of reasons:
“Just didn’t have much relevance” (female heterosexual)
“my keyworker said she was unable to talk about this and referred me to the sexual health
clinic” [and it would have been better] “if she could have talked to me about my issues”
(female heterosexual)
“Just pushed the issue aside like it did not matter as I question about male staff on the
team, as I am not ready to work with males” (female rainbow)
“A non appeal kind of threatening to talk about etc. I thought I should never of told her.
She downed me a little too much” (male rainbow)
3 out of 5 of the above respondents indicated this (unhelpful) discussion had made it hard to get
the mental health support they needed.
Main themes
For the qualitative section of the survey, participants who had indicated they had previously
discussed their sexuality with their keyworker responded to three questions about this discussion:
• Did the discussion make it harder to get the mental health support they needed?
• What could have made the discussion better?
• If it had not been helpful, why?
19 respondents added replies to some or all of the questions.
The main three themes identified from the response to this question were:
• The keyworker’s lack of ability to facilitate appropriate discussion on sexuality was
commented on by 9 respondents. This included level of comfort, skill, ability to engage in
in-depth conversations and negative responses from the service provider.
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