A Live Panel Event on Zoom · Monday, May 11 · 3 PM ET
About the Panel
The conversation will look directly at the emerging reality of Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction — the loss of sensation, connection, and responsiveness that many are now reporting — and explore whether practices like Orgasmic Meditation (OM) can support a return to feeling.
OM was developed specifically to restore and deepen awareness of sensation — not orgasm as a goal, but the capacity to feel, attend to, and stay present with whatever is there. For people whose nervous systems have been blunted or dysregulated, the practice can be a great path to resensitizing. Research on the practice has shown measurable effects on mood, connectedness, and autonomic nervous system regulation — areas that overlap with what PSSD disrupts.
Panel Moderator
Rutgers-trained family care physician
"What are the health benefits of Orgasmic Meditation? Ask me what are the health benefits of community and connection and intimacy and love and honesty and being connected to your body and relaxation and hormone balancing and sleep."
By the Numbers
13.2%
of U.S. adults aged 18+ took an antidepressant in the past 30 days
CDC NCHS Data Brief, 2017–2018
~37M
Americans currently prescribed SSRIs or related antidepressants
IQVIA / CDC estimates
40–65%
of SSRI users report sexual dysfunction as a side effect
Journal of Clinical Psychiatry meta-analyses
46%
of long-term SSRI users report emotional blunting
Goodwin et al., Journal of Affective Disorders, 2017
56%
of people stopping antidepressants experience withdrawal symptoms
Davies & Read, Addictive Behaviors, 2019
PSSD
Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction — persistent sexual, emotional, and cognitive blunting that can continue long after discontinuation
Recognized by the European Medicines Agency, 2019
The Research on OM
Finding No. 01
OM has been shown to reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions — effectively widening the band of feeling available to practitioners. This stands in direct contrast to the emotional blunting commonly reported by long-term SSRI users.
Prause, Cohen & Siegle — PLOS ONE, 2021
Read the Paper →Finding No. 02
Where SSRIs are well-documented to dampen arousal and sexual response, OM participants — including those with trauma histories — show increased physiological arousal during practice, measured through galvanic skin response and autonomic markers.
Siegle & Prause — Int. J. of Psychophysiology, 2022
Read the Paper →Finding No. 03
62% of OM participants score in the range of moderate-dose psilocybin on the validated Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ-30). Mystical-type experiences are independently associated with sustained decreases in depression — a non-pharmacological pathway to the same therapeutic signal.
Siegel & Emmert, 2021 · Newberg et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
Read the Paper →Physicians on the Record
"We saw decreases in frontal lobe activity, associated with a sense of letting go or release. Another area was the anterior cingulate gyrus…supporting how OM…can be useful in helping people regulate their emotions."
Andrew Newberg, MD
Thomas Jefferson University · Marcus Institute
"I've observed the health benefits of OM singularly exceed those of any other mindfulness, stress reduction, or trauma resolution interventions that I am aware of."
Michelle Veneziano, DO
Osteopath · trauma resolution
"What are the health benefits of Orgasmic Meditation? Ask me what are the health benefits of community and connection and intimacy and love and honesty and being connected to your body and relaxation and hormone balancing and sleep."
Teresa Diaz, OB/GYN
Rutgers-trained family care physician
From the OM-for-Health physician panel · iomfoundation.org/om-for-health
Featured Story
Her depression had her withdrawn from her own life. In this short film she describes what changed — and what it felt like to come back.
Researchers, clinicians, and practitioners on depression, the limits of SSRIs, and what the OM data is telling us about an alternative pathway to recovery.
