Compreendendo a sexualidade de mulheres portadoras de hanseníase.

Abstract

Leprosy is an infectious and contagious disease that affects skin, mucous membranes and peripheral nerves and causes physical disabilities, bringing with it extremely intense emotional changes, due to the stigma that still remains on the patient and the disease. In view of the importance of sexuality for every individual, whether or not they have a disease capable of causing deformities, and the scarcity of studies involving the sexuality of women with leprosy, which makes this research necessary. The present study sought to know the sexuality of women affected by leprosy from its description of the aspects of social, sexual and affective life. Its specific objectives were to verify the changes perceived by leprosy patients in their sexuality, after the diagnosis, considering their friendly relationships, loving relationships and with family members and to characterize how these changes affected the sexuality of these users, especially investigating aspects such as sexual response , body image, relationship with the partner and love life. This is an exploratory and descriptive study, with a qualitative approach, developed at home of eight women with leprosy registered in health units residing in the neighborhoods Padre Cicero, Por do Sol and Casas Populares, located in the municipality of Cajazeiras, Alto- Sertão Paraibano. As a tool for data collection, a guided interview was conducted through a structured script, containing data for characterization of the sample (twelve questions), as well as more specific questions that integrate the research theme (nine questions). The participants' narratives were collected in May and June of the following year and analyzed according to the content analysis technique proposed by Bardin (2009). It is worth mentioning that the research was submitted to the Research Ethics Committees of the State University of Paraíba (UEPB) and was approved with opinion number 0181.0.133.000-11. It was possible to verify through this study that, for women, it is difficult to talk about leprosy, what is sexuality and how and their affective and sexual life for some, their daily lives changed a lot after the diagnosis of the disease. However, it can be seen that, due to the amount of information currently disseminated about leprosy, people are increasingly well informed of how its transmission actually occurs, making fear of contracting the disease no longer generating old prejudices. Some people are still afraid to talk about how they see the disease and how they started to relate to friends and family. It was possible to conclude that such relationships have not changed for the participants in this research. Finally, it is perceived the importance of health professionals to seek to be constantly updated and prepared to deal with all the problems arising from leprosy, treating patients in a complete way, paying attention to all the debts they may have, including uncertainties about how it will be your affective and sexual life, showing that talking about sexuality is something that should not cause embarrassment and should be discussed inside and outside the basic health units.