Sexuality, if lived satisfactorily, is an expression of health. Sexual education is a difficult subject. In the mentally impaired, it is even more aggravated due to the belief that these individuals will not be “understood”, or they “will not be able to decide for themselves”, or “use methods adequately”. There are other unfounded believes, such as that “mentally impaired individuals are asexuated or like children” and “that sexual interest should not be awaken in these individuals”.
The nurse is the healthcare professional that maintains the closest contact with the community and thus, knows the population and its needs much better than anyone else, both individually and as a whole, enabling the nursing professional to perform adequate health education tasks.
To create a Health Education programme for affective-sexual health in a centre for the mentally impaired was the objective of this work.
After having reviewed the literature, we propose a Health Education programme on affective-sexual matters, taking into account different levels: users, families, professionals and society.
A multidisciplinary team would be in charge of implementing the program, where the nurse as a health educator, would have the role of coordinator of all the other professionals.