The mental and social dangers that teenagers experience can lastingly affect adulthood. According to the University of Michigan, at the point when those dangers incorporate drug use, mental misery, and presentation to savagery, they may take part in risky intercourse that builds their possibility of HIV disease.
This long-term study was conducted from September 1994 to May 2013 in Flint, Mich, with 850 students, mainly African-American. Scientists asked them about their intimate behaviors, mental health, being a victim or witness of violence, and social conditions beginning at age 14. They were assessed six times during the study until age 32.
One out of four respondents had a moderately higher recurrence of co-happening mental and social hazards, as teenagers will probably report unsafe intercourse with late accomplices and in addition, intercourse with somebody they just met in adulthood.
Moreover, they will probably show unlawful drug use prior to intercourse and have no less than four intimate partners. This portion was more powerless against HIV hazards than the individuals who were a piece of the low recurrence of hazard gathering, which had fewer occurrences of medication utilization, viciousness, and mental trouble among youth.
Study lead author David Cordova said, “Our findings support the notion that the increasing frequency of psychosocial risk factors experienced during adolescence may have effects on HIV risk behaviors decades later.”
“Since the study mainly involved African-American respondents, the findings may not be generalized to all adolescent populations.”
The study ‘Are trajectories of psychosocial risk in adolescence linked to HIV vulnerability in emerging and young adulthood? An eighteen-year longitudinal study‘Â appears in the journal AIDS.