Recent Peer Reviewed Publications
Mistrust and missed opportunities: BDSM practitioner experiences in healthcare
Aim: This exploratory study sought to better understand medical mistrust and experiences of discrimination in primary care settings and how these factors predict hiding kink-related injuries from healthcare providers.
Methods: A total of 301 individuals who self-identified as being a member of the BDSM community and engaged in BDSM-play activities completed an online survey.
Outcomes: Participants completed measures including experiences with BDSM-play-related injuries, disclosure of BDSM activity to healthcare providers, measures addressing mistrust in in healthcare providers (such as avoidance of questions about sexual health or STI testing), and experiences with discrimination in healthcare settings because of BDSM group membership (such as perceptions of being insulted or receiving poor care).
Results: Nearly, 40% of participants indicated at least one experience with discrimination in the healthcare system because they identified as a member of the kink community. Over 20% of participants indicated there were BDSM-related concerns they would have liked to discuss with their primary care provider but did not. Participants who hid injuries from their primary care provider had higher levels of medical mistrust and more experiences with medical discrimination than those who disclosed their injuries. A stepwise logistic regression determined that medical mistrust served as a significant predictor of hiding injuries from healthcare providers.
Clinical implications: Patients who are members of the BDSM community are likely to have had negative healthcare experiences, and these experiences impact their communication with and trust in future medical encounters.
Conclusion: Mistrust in the medical system impacts members of the BDSM community's willingness to disclose injuries to their healthcare provider.
Addressing the Impacts of Acquired Communication Disorders on Sexuality: Speech-Language Pathologists’ and Clinical Psychologists’ Beliefs and Practice Patterns
Acquired communication disorders are prevalent, particularly for older adults and people in healthcare settings. They can have substantial impacts on sexual health and intimacy. Yet, it is not clear whether speech-language pathologists (SLPs) or clinical psychologists whether they are aware of the impacts of communication disorders on sexuality or whether they feel empowered to address them.
This study surveyed clinical psychologists and SLPs to determine (a) whether either profession was addressing sexuality-related concerns consistently, (b) if they believed sexuality was important to their clients, (c) what they felt their role was in addressing this, (d) how much they believed communication disorders effected sexuality in comparison with other physical or psychological disorders, and (e) what barriers they found to addressing sexuality in their work.
The results indicate that clinical psychologists and SLPs believe communication disorders can impact sexual health at similar rates to physical and psychological disorders, but they are not clear on what professionals should be addressing these effects. SLPs, particularly, are divided about whether this work is in their scope of practice.
Implications for the accessibility of sexuality interventions for people with communication disorders are discussed.
Ethics in psychological research: Guidelines and regulations.
Ethical decision making in psychological research requires knowledge of the rules and regulations governing its practices as well as the ability to identify and resolve complex ethical conflicts.
Researchers use several sources of information when faced with ethical questions, including their knowledge of research and methodology and the advice of colleagues, team members, and institutional representatives. Researchers also must have the ability to integrate these resources and apply them to their particular situation to address complex ethical dilemmas.
This chapter provides an introduction to ethical issues and resources in psychological research with human participants, including an overview of federal regulations, institutional oversight, and professional guidelines, and discusses major concepts in research ethics related to the planning and execution of behavioral research.
It also discusses approaches to science-in-ethics decision making when addressing novel ethical questions and challenges in which standard regulations and professional guidelines may offer incomplete solutions.
An Examination of Empathy and Interpersonal Dominance in BDSM Practitioners
Background: Recent research has indicated that participation in BDSM (bondage-discipline, dominance-submission, and/or sadism-masochism) is not associated with psychological distress or psychopathology but that sexual roles may be associated with personality characteristics, specifically interpersonal dominance and empathy.
Aim: The present study examined potential differences between those who identify as dominant, switch, and submissive on interpersonal dominance and empathy.
Methods: Individuals who identified as members of the BDSM community were recruited online via a social networking site.
Main outcome measures: Self-reported demographic variables, the Personality Assessment Inventory, Dominance subscale, and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index Empathic Concern subscale.
Results: Participants were well distributed across sexual roles (n = 279; 25.4% dominant, 38% submissive, 36.6% switch), identified as primarily female (59.5%), primarily heterosexual (53.4%), and the most common age group was 25-34 years (27.2%). BDSM role was associated with scores on the Dominance subscale; dominant BDSM practitioners scored significantly higher on the Dominance scale than switches, who in turn scored significantly higher than submissives (dominant mean [M] = 61.44, standard deviation [SD] = 8.26; switch M = 53.99, SD = 11.18, P < .01; submissive M = 49.41, SD = 11.46, P < .01). There were no differences on the measure of empathy between dominant, submissive, and switch BDSM practitioners. On average, individuals who identified as submissives and switches scored in the average range on the Dominance scale compared with the normative sample, and individuals who identified as dominants scored higher but not in the markedly elevated range.
Clinical implications: The study provides information on the relationship between interpersonal dominance as a personality trait and dominance as a sexual role and has implications for reducing stigma related to these practices.
Conclusion: These findings suggest that there are no differences in empathy between BDSM practitioner roles, and although there are differences in interpersonal dominance, these characteristics are not likely to be prominent in individuals' everyday interactions.