I average 5 emails a week from OT students asking the question, “where do I start?”, “what do I do if this content isn’t addressed within my program?”, “who can mentor me?”. Additionally, 15% of CSOT enrollees are students hungry for information about Sexual Health OT because they know their program didn’t prepare them. Then I met Lindsay and Talula…

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Sexual health is a vital part of the human experience, yet is an area that continues to face challenges due to OT clinicians and professors feeling unprepared to address it. One approach to bridging this gap is through student-professor collaboration.

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Until 2018, narratives largely centered dysphoria in connection with transgender and gender diverse (TGD) experiences (Ashley & Ells, 2018). With that, a deficits-based narrative and pathology-focused lens dominated conversations around sexual health and TGD folks.

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There comes a point in every Sex OT evaluation when I ask, “What are y’all doing when you have sex? For example, how does it start, what happens next, and then what?”

If you work in any setting where you’re discussing sex or pelvic floor dysfunction, we need to know what sex looks like so we can do an activity analysis and identify where the breakdown is.

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There comes a point in every Sex OT evaluation when I ask, “What are y’all doing when you have sex? For example, how does it start, what happens next, and then what?”

If you work in any setting where you’re discussing sex or pelvic floor dysfunction, we need to know what sex looks like so we can do an activity analysis and identify where the breakdown is.

Read more →

Over the past two years, I had the honor of training Ukrainian healthcare providers (many veterans themselves) to lead sexual health conversations with the kind of courage and clarity this work demands. What started as a 4-month training turned into a full-blown train-the-trainer program that’s now launching across Ukraine.

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This blog features an interview with my friend Scott (name changed for confidentiality), a disabled adult I first connected with back in 2020. I asked if he’d be open to sharing his story—one that highlights the very real shortcomings of occupational therapy when it comes to addressing sex, and the lived experience of navigating disability while trying (and eventually succeeding) to access sexual connection.

This blog is written by my friend, Scott (*name changed for confidentiality). Scott and I started emailing back in 2020. Recently, I asked him if he’d be willing to share his story which includes examples of Occupational Therapy shortcomings, as well as the lived narrative of a person with a disability trying and eventually succeeding to access sex.

What if pleasure wasn’t just a perk, but a practice? In the world of occupational therapy, “pleasure” often gets left out of the conversation—hidden behind clinical terms like “sexual activity” or “intimate social participation.” But at the 2025 OT Sex Summit, we’re bringing it front and center. From reclaiming joy post-injury to reimagining what OT can look like when rooted in play, intimacy, and embodiment, this post is your invitation to think bigger. Because putting pleasure into practice isn’t just radical—it’s essential.

👉 Read the full post to see why this shift matters, and how you can be part of it.

Kathryn collaborated with Hannah Tyer for this month’s blog. Hannah is an Occupational Therapist and Certified Sexuality Occupational Therapy Practitioner who runs a private sex therapy practice in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I can’t overstate how excited I get whenever I see OTs in product development roles.  A huge kudos to Hannah for pushing the boundaries of where and how OTs show up to change the world!

OT Dr. Kathryn Ellis teams up with artist and OTD Finley Baker to share illustrated sexual health resources for trans and disabled clients. This post includes clinical scenarios, practical applications, and inclusive tools you can use in practice.

The number one mistake I see OT/OTAs (OTs) make when they address sex with clients is that they don’t ask enough questions. This is because our patients can quite often be a bit tightlipped when discussing sex. They may answer verbosely, but not really answer the question, or they might answer the question with as few words as possible. OTs can interpret their patients' hesitancy as either discomfort or perhaps a nonverbal boundary that they don’t want to discuss more. 

Occupational therapy clinicians are perfectly situated to address sex with our patients, because the occupational therapy approach already gives us all the skills we need. Read on to learn about adaptive strategies, trial and error, energy conservation, assistive technology, and downgrading.

I got the idea for this handout when I was conducting a 10 hour training for an interdisciplinary Brain Injury Unit team. The training was focused on interventions and considerations for sex and relationships for people with brain injury. The team asked a LOT of questions about how to respond to sexually relevant comments and questions. There were a lot of “well what about this scenario…?” and “what if this happens…?”

60% of people with brain injury report difficulties with sexual health. 75% demonstrate hyposexual difficulties, while 25% demonstrate hypersexual behaviors. Since there is often no guidance on how to navigate these symptoms or address the sexual goals of patients, staff can often be at a loss for what to do….

It is estimated that 6.3 million people are being commercially sexually exploited globally at any given time based on the most recent 2021 report by the International Labour Organization and the Walk Free Foundation. Over 25% of these people are under the age of 18 and nearly 80% are women or girls….

Never underestimate the power of an incredible and responsive AOTA President and a cold email! I emailed Alyson after AOTA's Post Dobbs Report came out with recommendations for how to execute the recommendations in the report. Alyson was immediately responsive and enthusiastic about learning more….

Clinicians can, rightfully so, feel cautions to challenge what clients admit as cultural messages. For example, "I grew up in a Catholic home and still view sex as 'dirty' and 'sinful,' and I’m having a hard time enjoying it,” or “My culture values young women, and women over 40 aren’t considered attractive anymore…

After the June 2022 Supreme Court decision “Dobb’s v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization” Alyson Stover, AOTA President, and Micheal Urban, the RA Speaker, requested a Post-Dobbs Task Force to identify the impact of the ruling on OT clients and OT practitioners. The task force, chaired by Emily Rothman and Rakhi Srivastava, identified areas within OTs scope of practice that are directly impacted by the Dobbs decision and generated a plan to address these areas and maximize OTs impact on those affected by the decision.

The history of how society has molded perceptions of women is a multifaceted narrative that has endured for centuries, influenced by cultural, regional, and media representations. Women have often found themselves defined by preconceived notions imposed upon them by others, commonly men. Within this context, different groups of women have experienced a spectrum of stereotypes, ranging from asexualization to sexualization, hypersexualization, and fetishization.