A controlled Pilot Study to test the Online Intervention Self:Cervix focusing on cervical Pain, Numbness, sexual Pleasure and Well-being

There is a need for more holistic and multidisciplinary approaches to treat female sexual dysfunction disorders. New programs to improve female sexual experiences or help with sexual dysfunctions have been created. In a controlled pilot study, we evaluated Self:Cervix, an online intervention aimed to increase women’s sexual pleasure and reducing genital pain and/or numbness through guided self-massage, mindfulness techniques to increase pleasure, and learning about consent. To this end, 36 women in the intervention group and 25 in an untreated control group (CG) filled in online questionnaires twice across a 6-month interval. In this period, Self:Cervix participants took part in three 21-day online courses. Outcome criteria were genital numbness, sexual functioning, and pain during intercourse in addition to attitudes towards women’s genitals and psychological well-being. There were no significant effects on numbness and pain in the repeated measures analysis of variance. However, compared with the control group, women in the intervention group showed significantly increases in desire (p ≤ .010, η2 = .122), arousal (F = 7.114, p ≤ .010, η2 = .122), and psychological well-being (anxiety: F = 12.227, p < .001, η2 = .172; depression: F = 4.887, p ≤ .031, η2 = .076; somatization: F = 5.465, p ≤ .023, η2 = .086) and more positive attitudes towards women’s genitals. To conclude, participants benefited from Self:Cervix in some areas, but more research is needed with more sensitive measures to capture more subtle changes in genital sensitivity and numbness. peerReviewed publishedVersion