Training Clinical Psychologists in Canada: How Prepared Are Students to Deal with Clients' Sexual Problems?

Training Clinical Psychologists in Canada: How Prepared Are Students to Deal with Clients' Sexual Problems?, S. Andrea Miller and E. Sandra Byers, University of New Brunswick, Canada

Therapists need to be prepared to help clients deal with sexual concerns even if they are not sex therapists. Researchers and therapists have proposed that therapy training programs need to increase students' comfort with hearing explicit sexual material from clients, as well as to educate students about sexuality if their students are to be able to help clients deal with their sexual concerns. This study investigated the extent to which Canadian clinical psychology graduate programs are teaching future psychologists about sexual issues. Students from all English-Canadian clinical psychology programs accredited by the Canadian Psychological Association were asked to complete a web-based survey that assessed the extent of education students had received on nine specific topic areas related to sexuality. Students were also given the opportunity to provide qualitative information concerning their feelings about sexual education at the graduate level. We found that, for all of the nine topic areas, less than 30% of the students felt the topic was adequately addressed in their graduate-level training. Further, for 7 of the 9 topic areas, less than half of the students who had completed a practicum received any relevant training during their placement. Victims of sexual violence and sexual orientation issues were two areas in which most students reported receiving at least some training during practice. For all of the 9 topic areas, 65% or more of the students had never treated a client with the relevant sexual problem/concern nor observed another clinician treating this type of issue. Students in our study recognized that sexual education was an important part of clinical training: 86% reported that they would like to gain additional training in this area, and 97% felt that it was important or very important for psychology graduate students to receive education concerning sexuality. However, Canadian programs do not offer many of them this opportunity.