Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:00:00
Sexual health is a core part of physical health. It's also a core part of mental health. Historically, there's been a lot of attention paid to male sexual functioning; plenty of research on the topic, great medications available. For women on the other hand, sexual dysfunction has been culturally normalized to be a natural part of life of parenting or an acceptable part of the aging process. Sexual dysfunction is medically defined as persistent or recurring problems with sexual response, desire, orgasm, or pain, all of which can result in distress. Among women, the most common sexual dysfunction is low sexual desire.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:00:40
According to current estimates, 40% of women in US have self reported low sexual desire with the true disorder, so the clinical criteria affects about 10% of adult women and 14% of perimenopausal adult women. So in US alone, an estimated 9.5 million perimenopausal women fit the criteria for a formal diagnosis of low desire. Of course, this can be pretty distressing to a woman who longs to feel satisfaction in her sexual relationship or in her sense of identity as a sexual being. There are currently two FDA approved medications for low desire, and there are a handful of psychotherapy interventions, lifestyle changes and these work some of the time for some women. But this is an area where psychedelics, specifically MDMA, may offer a bold new approach.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:01:37
Today's episode is all about how MDMA can support healing in wholeness among women who experience low sexual desire. Welcome to MIND CURIOUS, a podcast for those looking to explore the potential of psychedelic compounds. In this show we'll dive deep and test our understanding of what consciousness is while talking to experts in the field who are no strangers to tapping into the curiosities of the mind. I'm your host, clinical psychologist, Dr. Sherry Walling. Before we dive in, one common sense reminder that this podcast does not constitute medical or legal advice.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:02:12
The perspectives of the guests are theirs alone. They don't represent me, my opinions, or those of our sponsor Mind Cure Health. Let's dive in. Why use a psychedelic drug like MDMA to treat low sexual desire? It sounds a little salacious.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:02:37
Drugs, sex and rock and roll. The answer is actually deceptively simple. What is the object of desire if not pleasure? Perhaps it is an impairment to one's capacity for pleasure that can cause a lack of sexual interest in the first place. This impairment might be caused by trauma, can also be caused by anxiety, depression, changes in lifestyle, or responsibilities.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:02:59
Whatever the cause, the theory goes that MDMA has the potential to treat the root problem rather than just as symptoms and therefore can help women get back towards a familiarity with pleasure and desire. Although this is an intuitive thought, it makes perfect sense to me. There is a stigma to the conversation around female sexual desire and pleasure. I raised the topic of desire and psychedelics with Hamilton Morris. Few people know more about psychedelic use than Hamilton.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:03:29
He's a journalist and scientist with a background in anthropology and chemistry. You may know him as the creator of the Viceland documentary series Hamilton's Pharmacopia. He's also a scientific advisor at Mind Cure.

Hamilton Morris - 0:03:47
I don't know what it is exactly but there is a discomfort that people have with both their own pleasure and I think, especially with the perceived pleasure of others. It's a source of an almost mind boggling amount of anger. I think that that might even underlie a lot of the public support for prohibition is this idea that someone is maybe having a good time and you're out there and you're working hard every day and you're suffering, and who and how dare that person have a good time while you're suffering?

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:04:28
How irresponsible?

Hamilton Morris - 0:04:28
How irresponsible, and what if they get hurt? Then it's your taxpayer money that's going to have to save them. No, thank you. I think that's the attitude. I see this a lot in my own work is people just very both projecting no matter what I'm doing, like this conversation that we're having right now went on YouTube, there will guaranteed be a dozen comments. It would just be like how high is he right now?

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:04:58
(laughing)

Hamilton Morris - 0:04:58
It's like not high at all, it's like 2:00 PM and I've been writing emails all day. But I think again, the reason I'm even saying this is not to complain about people who attack other people on the Internet, but just that there is this puritanical discomfort with other people's pleasure. Once you get to the point that you're harassing strangers because you think that they are in pleasure, it just becomes emblematic of the cultural discomfort with this subject. Like I don't know how it could change, we'd probably have to live in some radically different society where people weren't so stressed by work all the time, and I don't see that happening anytime in the near future, so maybe this is just something we all have to live with, I don't know.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:05:36
Yeah. What do you think about though something like MDMA that helps restore a capacity for pleasure, so for those who maybe have lost the ability to experience sexual pleasure or a sense of their own happiness and euphoria?

Hamilton Morris - 0:05:55
I think it's an interesting way of treating things, and it's very different from the way any of these other medications are operating. Bremelanotide is basically an aphrodisiac. It's not aimed at addressing trauma or any overarching psychological barriers that might exist in the realm of sexual dysfunction. It's just a substance that for reasons that I don't think are fully understood in both men and women, seems to be a rare instance of a genuine aphrodisiac, whereas the idea of something that is actually getting to the root of the lack of desire or the lack of ability to experience pleasure, I think is a really valuable idea.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:06:47
I think one of the things that I'm curious to see is how much there'll be a re-emergence of the conversation around or focused on women and women's pleasure. I'm trying to imagine a reality in which the medical community would accept interventions that are directed toward helping to promote sexual pleasure via psychedelic medications. You think that's ever going to fly?

Hamilton Morris - 0:07:24
The way you phrased it probably no because the idea of promoting pleasure is not a medically valid concern. There's only alleviating lack of pleasure.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:07:38
Treating female sexual dysfunction

Hamilton Morris - 0:07:40
Yes, exactly. Yeah, you have to create some convoluted disorder. I've read who knows how many think pieces about the bioethics of. Bremelanotide, which used to be called PT 141 or flibanserin and people get really twisted in knots about whether women should even be using these things because they'll say, well, maybe there's a reason women have decreased sexual desire, and maybe this is putting a band aid on a bigger problem or something like that. Then what I think is interesting, not to say that those questions aren't valid, they are, what I think is interesting. You pretty much never see those questions with men at all. You never hear a man saying like well, what kind of a society do we live in where men are expected to have erections?

Hamilton Morris - 0:08:24
That's a totally unfair expectation. Maybe if a man isn't having interaction, maybe it's because there's a bigger cultural reason and we need to think about that before we prescribe a pill. With men this is not talked about. No one ever made. They just say, okay, it works fantastic. Let's take it.

Hamilton Morris - 0:08:41
Then I wonder, is the real issue that none of these things work that well for women? Then the bioethical considerations become more prominent, because who knows if anyone really should be, forget the ethics, who knows if anyone should be taking this stuff, period? Not even as an ethical question.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:08:58
Doesn't work that well.

Hamilton Morris - 0:09:00
Yeah, it doesn't work that well. But when you have something that actually works, I think that suddenly a lot of those ethical questions become irrelevant because anyone that wants it will take it. Again, I think that's another reason that the use of psychotherapy is a more palatable option than daily consumption of some serotonergic agent that might produce a marginal increase in sexual activity.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:09:32
Hamilton recognizes the potential of MDMA as an alternative to existing treatments for low desire, but he also stresses the importance of psychotherapy to the healing process. By the same token, Mind Cure Health is embarking on a clinical trial to test the possibility that MDMA assisted psychotherapy can treat low sexual desire in women. This trial is part of an initiative called The Desire Project, a research venture which aims to drive clinical outcomes for female hypoactive sexual desire disorder or HSDD. HSDD is more or less just another way of saying low desire. I spoke with Kelsey Ramsden, CEO and Co-founder of Mind Cure about The Desire Project.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:10:09
You and your team recently made a big announcement about a direction that you are putting lots of resources, and energy, and excitement. Tell me about this big new project.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:10:27
The Desire Project, I am overwhelmingly excited about for a couple of reasons. One is nothing like this has been done before for women to address. Where we as women really fundamentally know desire comes from. When we have challenges with desire, oftentimes we're treating other things that aren't really getting at the root of it. I'm so happy to be a woman who has the resources with our team to orient to doing the work in this way. The second piece around it is I'm thankful that we are at a time in society where we can have a conversation about women and desire.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:11:03
Even though we're at the bleeding edge of it, people are open to orienting to the fact that our mental health and physical health is equally as related to our sexuality and our sexual health. The fellas have had a bit of runway on this conversation and normalizing it in a way that these women haven't had the stage yet. I'm so grateful for that piece

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:11:41
To come out and say part of being a full healthy human is having a sexual self, is having a sexual identity where you experience sexuality and desire in ways that feel really congruent with you, with who you are, with what you want in the world.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:11:59
It is exactly that and it is also an invitation to women, to all of the women because I think part of this conversation has been held in this. Only women who look a certain way or a certain age fit a certain archetype are desirous or host desire. That's not accurate.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:12:26
Yeah.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:12:26
it is not. Like the girl who does the banking for your grandma who still goes into the till, she is a sexual being. The teller at the bank, and the girl at the grocery store, and the lady on the bus, and at one point your grandmother. We can hold that now, I think.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:12:48
I love the way that you are framing this conversation, because it feels like it moves out of blood flow, and sex organs, and is really a much more comprehensive understanding of what creates sensuality, sexuality, what creates desire. You're thinking about what's going on between the ears, the brain, the mental part of sex.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:13:14
Yes, that's a perfect analogy. I think I'll steal it. What goes on between the ears translates into something that goes on between the legs. I don't want to make this conversation something that is men versus women or anything like that. I think more than anything, the way that we approach sexuality can have a lot of similarities, it really can. Desire can have a lot of similarities.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:13:40
But for women and in our groups, in our book clubs, in our glass of wine moments, and amongst our girlfriends, this is a very common conversation, is very common. This is not a revolution internally but once we leave those places of all women, this is a revolution to treat what's between our ears as a valuable origin space for desire and really the place of the spark that then can translate into all sorts of other. activities.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:14:21
One of the things that we've talked about a lot over the course of the season of this podcast is the integration of the mind and the body and that psychedelics, MDMA offer this really interesting and I think, revolutionary opportunity for mental health folk for physicians to really get at those integrative pieces in a way that our traditional treatments of maybe talk therapy medicine just don't fully allow the putting together of those segments of our human existence. This project, this research study of looking at how MDMA, in particular course of MDMA supported or assisted psychotherapy, helps with desire is again this integration of mind and body.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:15:07
I think it's important always when we talk about psychedelic work, to hone in on the word that you used, which is the integration of. There is this great expectation that we go, and we do a course of this therapy, and we walk out, and we're fixed.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:15:25
Bam! I'm a wonderful sexual creature all of a sudden.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:15:28
Oh my gosh, I went from feeling totally unseen, and unheard, and disconnected to my body and not even feeling anything but wanting to feel it, and yet, miraculously, on my way home, I'm stopping in it, Victoria's Secret, that is not what we're talking about. We're talking about when you go through these processes of healing and coming to understanding and the knowing deeply inside, that then we can put that into practice in a way that does not feel forced, that does not feel like it's a mental orchestration. about if I take these boxes, if I schedule sex on Wednesday, it's going to come back. Most of us who've been in the game for long enough as women know that that can be helpful but it's not necessarily sustainable or landing in the deeper self in a way that we can feel invited into desire in a way that is our own.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:16:26
Which is where this holistic process of the integration component. You can be changing from the inside out, feeling more connected to your own body, feeling more interested in experience of desire. But there's still that issue of how do you get it on the calendar when you got three kids and you're running a business and your husband travels for work and blah blah blah blah blah.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:16:49
Yes.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:16:50
That's also a part of this, right? How does that transformative experience then get scheduled into your Tuesday?

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:17:00
Yeah. I think what I've witnessed in people who've gone through some form of psychedelic medicine in the conversation we have, oftentimes a month or two afterwards, is that it's so difficult to translate that experience to the other, so you come home and you tell your partner and they say, how was it, what was it like, and it's very challenging to express that. But when it's framed in a different way and as opposed to that conversation looking like, what did it look like, in moreover looking like what have you noticed about the change in me, it's very easy for that relational partnership to witness the transformation and the ways we just show up differently, which is inviting to yeah, we don't have to schedule it Wednesday. It's just going to evolve and I'm more connected and oftentimes even that, that I'm more connected to myself can spark desire in a way that you can maintain this stasis point of not necessarily having sexual activity for a longer period of time because there is a richness and fullness of desire. It doesn't just need sexual resolution, there's something beautiful in that. It's very different to the to the context of the heady every Wednesday

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:18:32
Speaks to a sexuality that is more than just an orgasm. Orgasms are great, don't get me wrong, big fan.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:18:39
I love them, everybody loves them.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:18:40
But there's a whole experience of connection to oneself and connection to one's partner that is a piece of this equation that I'm really excited to see how that plays out in this therapy.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:18:53
Me too. I think also invites women to have the conversation about relationship to self and other that isn't just oriented to the oversexualization of the goal is the orgasm. Well my friends if the goal is orgasm relationship wouldn't be required because we're all pretty capable of achieving that outcome independent of the other. So why is it that we go after relationship and invest in these community systems and a culturally for ever? Relation to other has been an important part. I'm really interested in what we find and how this rolls out.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:19:35
Quite frankly, I'm really interested in how this can change the way we talk about women as we go from 20 to 55. A huge amount of transformation through those years as women and we just don't talk a lot about how that can impact our sense of self and our relationship to desire. There's a part of the conversation that is always a bit of a challenge though, when we think about these traditional male-female dynamics. I'm going to asterisk this by saying so far in our conversation we've predominantly talked about men and women, but there's a variety of types of relationship. that are also suffering or exposed to this same challenge, so whether my partner is female, my partner's transgender, my partner identifies as whatever, there's a whole landscape for that.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:20:37
I think it's important to put that in.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:20:44
Absolutely.

Kelsey Ramsden - 0:20:44
Just so excited to be a small part in a much bigger movement in a time where people are open to it and with women who are ready to say I am a sovereign womanly individual who believes in the value of my own desire. and who knows that by connecting to that self other my life will be a richer experience.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:21:17
With The Desire Project, Mind Cure is bringing together a team of experts in sexual disorders and psychedelics. One of the most esteemed researchers on the team is Dr. Anita Clayton. She's the chair of psychiatry and neuro behavioral science at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Her decades long research career has focused on sexual medicine and women's mental health. Among her many accomplishments, Dr. Anita developed and validated the changes in sexual functioning questionnaire to measure sexual desire. I asked her to share her incredibly qualified perspective on the discourse surrounding sexual health and the role that something like MDMA could play in potential treatment options.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:21:47
Is it difficult to define sexual dysfunction, to describe it in a very objective diagnostic way?

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:22:12
I really don't think it is. I think people have different experiences and sometimes they apply their own experiences, and also a lot of people are not educated about phases of the sexual response cycle. But I think if you talk with them about those or you ask the questions sequentially, and define terms, and also don't use complicated scientific terms, I think that most people and women can give you a pretty good history of what's going on with them. I don't like the word distress, which is the main word used for sexual dysfunction, but if you talk about are you angry, frustrated, do you feel a loss, What's your sexual self esteem like, are you worried, what do you think the ramifications of this is, that thing, I think that then people will give you those words.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:23:14
Yeah. That helps to define the line between a disorder or something that might be treated from a medical or therapeutic background versus a dip in your relationship or feeling tired because of that second baby or or how people understand from a medical perspective that this doesn't have to be this way? Low desire is something we can treat. There are interventions for this versus maybe this is part of the normal ebb and flow of your sexual interest or your sexual life.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:23:50
I think one of the hard things are when the woman has not had the experience of something ever before, so she has had it life long. If she's never had an orgasm, if she is not really had desire, if she's asexual, those are all the kinds of things that may make it hard for her to actually define a complaint and talk about distress. We often have women go, well I don't know if I've ever had an orgasm before, things like that. But if you've had the experience of desire, if you've had the experience of being aroused and building excitement and wanting this to go on, and then you have an orgasm, I think that loss is far more acute and I think that really helps, is to talk about what's the temporal relationship to your complaint, that is, how long have you been concerned about this? Did you previously have an experience that was satisfying to you?

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:24:53
I think timing is key and almost everything in our lives, but the timing of onset, the duration of onset, so it may not even be something that they think of as potentially contributing to a problem. The one thing that really shocks me is that a lot of women have not been educated about menopause and what happens in terms of your sex hormones and therefore what happens in terms of the tissue that requires sex hormones to be functional. Educational loan can be helpful. Lots of women don't even know to use a lubricant when they have vaginal dryness. I think the conversation about what's going on is also part of the conversation that's educational.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:25:42
What's the scope of the problem in terms of women who are experiencing less desire than they wish to?

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:25:49
We did a study a number of years ago, but we wanted to understand what the prevalence was. We used one of the scales I developed, the changes in sexual functioning questionnaire, to look at women in a general population sample. It was over 50,000 women had agreed to be surveyed on any number of things, and so they received a survey. It Included the changes in sexual function questionnaire. We had about a 63% response rate, which is really-

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:26:20
That's really good for 50,000 people.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:26:20
I'm confident about this data. What it turned out when we analyze the CSF queue initially was that about 40% of women had some complaint, 6% of women with HSDD. That is really common and it was pretty consistent across age. As we age and get to the menopause, desire goes down but so does your distress, 'cause you may or may not have a partner, or your partner may have sexual dysfunction, or you may just have slowed down. You've been in-

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:26:56
You're over it.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:26:56
Yeah. It's pretty consistent across ages. We had women up to 102 who answered this survey, 18-102.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:27:05
You're advising a project that uses MDMA assisted psychotherapy as an intervention for low desire. Tell me about your hopes for that project, or at least your scientific curiosities about whether this particular compound might be a game changer for women who are experiencing low sexual desire.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:27:31
When I think about desire and actually all of sexual functioning, we think about things that contribute to our being excited and that could be neurotransmitters, sex hormones, and it could be other factors. The erotic stimuli were seeing or past experiences and trying to catch that again, or we know what we like, that thing. Then we have inhibitory factors too. It could be neurotransmitters, it could be low hormones, but it could also be past experiences too. One of the big past experiences that contributes to not only low desire but other sexual dysfunction is a past history of trauma.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:28:04
That's not the only thing by any means, but it is one thing that is not uncommon among women. We have some medical treatments for HSDD which still only about 50% of women respond to each of those treatments. That was in the group statistics in the clinical trials.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:28:34
Is it fair to say that neither of those are addressing the underlying cause if it is related to trauma or depression, or more of a mental health category of cause?

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:28:44
In some ways we have other taboo subjects, not just sex. So put sex and trauma, or sex and substance abuse, and all these other things together and then people really don't talk about these things. There have been some studies looking at treatment for hypoactive sexual desire disorder using psychotherapy alone, but those studies are really don't have an adequate control. Those are somewhat effective, but not impressively so alone. The thing about MDMA agent is that it should help open your mind a bit and then you use psychotherapy potentially to help you, then focus what you need to focus on when you're open to doing that.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:29:29
But I think that if we can enhance psychotherapy, we may very well be able to help women get through that process in particular. It may even be helpful for women who haven't had trauma as well, because we all have baggage.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:29:52
What are the pieces of information you find yourself most often talking about with your patients? The aha moments where patients are like, ooh, I didn't even know that about my own body.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:30:04
I get a lot of patients referred, who have had some medical condition that might impact on their sexual functioning and that isn't just something in your genitalia, so breast cancer survivors and some of the medicines that they're taking and things like that. I think the thing that helps is to talk through what did you have before, what was that like for you, and what is happening now, and what do you want? Do you want to see your desire increase? Do you want to take a medicine? Do you want psychotherapy? Do you want to try something else? Understanding a woman's preferences and her needs like I want to do this because I want to get this back with my partner, but I also want my partner to know I still love them.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:30:54
This is not about our relationship, it's about what's happening to my body.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:31:03
Yeah.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:31:03
What is really going on that's may be causing this difficulty and can they communicate about it? 'Cause I can tell you with low desire what I have heard from mostly men partners is that, look at her, she's beautiful, I want her, but she doesn't really want me anymore. I'm worried she doesn't love me anymore, she doesn't find me attractive, that she's already having an affair, something else is going on, because women develop avoidance behaviors when their desire goes down. They don't want their partner to approach them and then they have to make a decision. Do I turn them down or do I participate out of obligation 'cause I really don't want to.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:31:48
They'll do things to try to keep their partner from approaching them. One of the things that I learned when we visited the Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta, they have a whole compound of these McCall monkeys that get a very red rear end when they're in that point where they would get pregnant and would allow sexual activity. But it's a very culture-driven society among them because you've got all these older female monkeys who are watching what's going on. The young females are running around with red butts and showing them, and the males are like I see that red butt, I don't know if I'm supposed to go after that red butt because if they go after a red butt that they're not supposed to go after, then these older females attack these males. They have prohibitions too.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:32:49
I guess everybody's got rules.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:32:53
They do. I started to think about that. I think we have that a lot in our own society, especially in our own homes. For example, if a woman is at the sink doing something, washing the dishes or whatever, and her partner sees her butt across the room and things that looks good, there's nobody there to go no, no, don't do anything about that, and so they go over and they approach their partner. In a woman who has HSDD what happens is, she's not prepared for that. She wasn't thinking about sex.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:33:26
She'll say, come on, I'm doing the dishes, or she'll be thinking that at least, and the communication is not very good. What I tell men, usually it's men again, partners is that probably is not going to get you sex. But here's what might. If you say to them, honey, you look great. Let me finish up the dishes, go get ready and I'll join you in a few minutes.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:33:56
Now if she has HSDD, that still may not be really what she wants, but it's more what she wants than-

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:34:07
Being tackled in the kitchen.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:34:08
Exactly.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:34:08
I think that's where the MDMA study is really interesting, because MDMA particular creates this subjective sense of empathy, which I imagine will be relevant both to someones empathy for themselves around their own experience, but also towards one's partner or partners. The sense of, I realized that when you're fondling my butt in the kitchen that's your longing for me. This reinterpretation of those signals can be possible when there's this medicine in combination with therapy. At least that's what we're hoping to find or we'll see if we find that.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:34:52
But there's a possibility, I will say that. There's a possibility that that could happen. That's why the therapist and what they say to help people move through this process is really pretty critical. It takes a lot of training to be at this level and to understand what is needed in this process.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:35:13
Yeah. Anything else that feels important to say specifically about the MDMA study?

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:35:20
Well, I think one of the key things is really we did not have a lot of difficulty enrolling people into the trials for hypoactive sexual desire disorder where we used a medication. I think if women know about this, they may very well be excited about it. The one thing I'm a little hesitant about is if the partner sees it and says you need to go do this. A woman has to want to want sex. She can't be told to want sex.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:35:53
But I think that there are plenty of women who will be very interested in-

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:36:04
Very excited to be excited again.

Dr. Anita Clayton - 0:36:04
Absolutely.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:36:09
Whether you're a member of the medical community, a mental health professional, or a woman who desires to desire again, you can follow along with the progress of this research project at mindcure.com. We're so excited to watch the desired project grow and evolve. Personally, I'm feeling pretty honored to be included in a research project that I think has such potential to help restore wellness to millions of women. First and foremost, we hope that more women will begin to share their stories as they realize that low sexual desire doesn't have to be an inevitable part of life. I hope we can help change the conversation such that mental health isn't just about the absence of a diagnosis, but is about the full expression of flourishing.

Dr. Sherry Walling - 0:36:50
Thanks so much for listening.