He was speaking at a workshop on ‘Art of psychiatry: Relationship matters’ organised by Indian Association of Private Psychiatry (IAPP) here on Sunday. Continuing, he spoke about sex therapy and deranged sexual relationships which play a very significant role between couples. Sexual relationships can be damaged especially by males due to high expectations from a partner.
Helping each other in daily activities like helping spouses in cooking food, goodwill gestures and appreciation of work would help in maintaining healthy sexual relationships, he added.
Observing that changing trends in relationships due to pre and extra-marital affairs, Dr Shalini Anant said counselling has an important role in dealing with people with intense emotional outbursts and threats of divorce or break-up.
Mentioning that even though the country boasts of low divorce rates, Dr Vijay Nagaswamy said the Indian families are also facing threat of increasing divorces.
He said that frequent arguments or fights with partners having a different lifestyle and activity schedule could lead to a very depressing married life.
Other participants discussed key issues related to couple therapy. Therapy begins with initiating steps for renewal of positive feelings and behaviours towards each other to provide immediate relief. Subsequent focus is on communication improvement as it is fundamental for systematic problem solving as opposed to an emotionally charged manner.
Problem solving techniques are there which deal with dysfunctional beliefs and emotional as well as sexual aspects of marriage.
Also there is usually a need to modify pattern of thinking of an individual on particular aspects of the spouse and generating alternate ways of thinking and perceiving life situations and demands.
IAPP president Dr Avdesh Sharma, Dr Sujatha Sharma, Dr Shruthi Kalra and Dr Reena Nath, Dr Abhinav Tandon were present.