Study: Mental Health Helps Predict HIV/STI-Related Sexual Risk Behaviors

A recent study suggests that employing emotional coping mechanisms and psychoeducation in black adolescents with mental illness may help to mitigate the psychological factors that contribute to increased human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) / sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk in this population.

In their study, researchers examined psychological and contextual factors related to HIV and STI risk in adolescents with mental illnesses that were not addressed in standard HIV and STI prevention models.  
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They recruited 53 black adolescent males and females from 14 to 17 years of age from outpatient mental health programs in Philadelphia. Participants completed a computer-assisted personalized interview on sociodemographics, sexual behaviors, and emotion regulation. Researchers examined differences by gender and relationship status using 2 sample t-tests, Wilcoxon Rank Sum tests and regression models.

Overall, researchers found that reports of sexual partner concurrency were high, with 67.3% of participants reported being in a sexual relationship and engaging in sex with another person, and 42.3% reported engaging in sex with multiple partners in the same day. Adolescent males reported significantly more engagement in risk behaviors than adolescent females.

Sadness dysregulation was shown to predict current relationship status, engaging in oral sex for the first time at an older age, fewer vaginal sexual partners, and fewer unprotected oral sexual encounters. Likewise, coping difficulties predicted a larger number of vaginal and oral sexual partners, and engaging in first vaginal sex at a younger age. Depression severity was found to be related to engaging in first vaginal sex at an older age, fewer vaginal sexual partners, and fewer unprotected oral sexual encounters in the past 3 months.

“This formative work suggests that coping mechanisms should be addressed in HIV/STI prevention research through the inclusion of activities targeted toward emotion regulation and decreasing sexual risk behaviors,” the researchers concluded. “Psycho-education and skills building may mitigate the psychopathology that contributes to HIV/STI risk in the target demographic.”

—Melissa Weiss

Reference:

Brawner BM, Jemmott LS, Wingood G, et al. Feelings matter: depression severity and emotion regulation in HIV/STI risk-related sexual behaviors [published online February 20, 2017]. J Child Fam Stud. doi:10.1007/s10826-017-0674-z.