14 DAY TRIAL // Young people tend to defy social rules in any way. And new young homeless people, living in friends' homes, abandoned buildings or the streets, have just got rid of supervision and social support, fact that turns them more prone to risky sexual behavior, as revealed by a new UCLA AIDS Institute research, published on-line in the "Journal of Adolescent Health". Drug use was found to boost this behavior.
Newly homeless youth were considered those away from family setting, for one day to six months. The team investigated the importance of elements like sociodemographics, depression and substance abuse, and living situations in this behavior.
"The reason these findings are so important is that interventions in the past have focused on addressing individual risk behavior and not on addressing structural factors, such as living situations, that might have an impact on their behavior. When we look at homeless youth, we want to consider these structural factors if we want them to reduce their risky behavior and thereby prevent sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV", said lead author Dr. M. Rosa Solorio, assistant professor of family medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine, at UCLA, and a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute.
The study was made on 261 newly homeless young people in Los Angeles County, aged 12 to 20. They were followed up for 2 years, being interviewed 6 times at baseline, at 6, 12, 18 and 24 months, about depression signs, substance use, living situations, number of sexual partners and condom use.
77 % were sexually active when the research started, and this number increased to 85 % two years later. Men/boys were more prone to have multiple sex partners, especially if they consumed drugs, but for women/girls, drug consume was the main factor causing this. In the homeless situation, girls/women were more likely not to use condoms; while this condition did not influenced men's use of condom. Generally, U.S.-born or foreign-born Latino women/girls were less prone to have sex with multiple partners, compared to females from other races and ethnic groups.
"While gender and some racial/ethnic differences in predictors of sexual risk were found in this study, living with nonfamily members and drug use appear to be the most salient in explaining sexual risk. Our findings indicate that interventions aimed at reducing sexual risk behaviors, and thereby reducing STDs and HIV among newly homeless youth, need to help youth find housing associated with supervision and social support (family and institutional settings) as well as aim to reduce drug use", wrote the authors.