(Press-News.org) Gay and bisexual youth who are supported by their family and feel comfortable talking to them about their lifestyle are less likely to become involved in high-risk sexual behaviors, according to a recent Rutgers study.
Published in the Journal of Marital & Family Therapy, the Rutgers School of Social Work study, Condoms and connection: Parents, gay and lesbian youth and HIV risk, found that positive family relationships and open dialogue led to an increase in safe sex practices, including the use of condoms, while disrupted family relationships resulted in risky sexual behaviors.
"Youth had limited engagement in unsafe sex when the families were able to have open, reciprocal discussions that were low in disagreement. Close family connections seemed to provide a context for safety," says Michael LaSala, Ph.D., LCSW, associate professor.
Over a period of 18 months, LaSala and his research assistant, James Fedor, a Ph.D. candidate, audio and video recorded interviews with 38 gay and bisexual male youth between 14 and 21 years of age and at least one of their parents or caretakers living in New Jersey, and the New York City, Washington DC, and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. Sons were asked about the nature of their family relationships, what they knew about HIV, whether or not they engaged in unsafe sexual behaviors, and whether parental relationships influenced their decisions to engage in safer sex. Parents were asked about their relationship with their children, their knowledge of HIV, and to assess their own influence on their child's risk behaviors.
Overall, reported parent-child closeness emerged as the most effective influence for youth in avoiding high-risk sexual behavior. Closeness was typified by acceptance of the child's sexual orientation and open communication about a variety of factors including the importance of safe sex. For example, one mother reported, "He's come home from school and told me different sexual things that are absolutely untrue, and my husband and I both set him straight. We tell him if there is anything that you hear at school and it doesn't sound right to you, come and talk to us." The youth who reported family influence on their decisions to engage in safe sex said discussions with parents, including warnings and urgings to use condoms, made a difference.
In families where youth reported no parental influence, half of the sons said they had engaged in unprotected intercourse in the past year. Almost all of these families experienced some kind of parental-child relationship disruption, either due to a parent's death, drug abuse, health problems, or ongoing disapproval or rejection because of the child's sexual orientation. One son, whose mother had died, reported that his father cut off ties with him when he came out as gay. He recalled, "My dad would say go right ahead; I don't care what you do." Shortly after coming out, he had engaged in several incidents of unsafe sex. Several youth who had experienced similar rejections became HIV positive.
Christopher Famiglietti, a second year MSW student who also has led SWAGGER (Social Workers Advocating for GLBT, Gender non-conforming/genderqueer Equal Rights) meetings and programming, assisted in transcribing the interviews for this research. He said the findings will help him to better assist gay and bisexual men in counseling.
Some parents are afraid to touch on these issues. But we see in the research that an open relationship with parents creates a safe environment for a child who feels different from family members," says Famiglietti.
LaSala said almost all parents in the study reported that they were not sure if they were doing a good enough job and wanted assistance in learning how to talk about this difficult subject. A frequently mentioned obstacle to HIV-related discussions was communication difficulties due to discomfort on the part of both the parent and the child. Further, almost all of the families said they viewed the school system as an important place for the child to receive information, and that they wished that health classes would do a better job of educating gay and bisexual youth on the dangers of same-sex high risk behaviors.
"We can't discount the role of the family in protecting these young adults. One son said that it is his mom's love that keeps him grounded. A family's acceptance and open dialogue helps to encourage the young adult to take care of himself. So, for many families, the ties that bind could be a powerful motivator to stay safe," says LaSala.
For those families with a disrupted parent-child relationship, LaSala says that a family therapist or family-oriented social worker should be brought in to help families unite, assist parents in adjusting to the child's sexual orientation, and help parents and youth openly and productively discuss HIV risk and prevention.
INFORMATION:
Johns Hopkins and other cancer researchers report that a very short course of a chemotherapy drug, called cyclophosphamide, not only can prevent a life-threatening immune response in some bone marrow transplant recipients, but also can eliminate such patients' need for the usual six months of immune suppression medicines commonly prescribed to prevent severe forms of this immune response. Patients receive cyclophosphamide for two days after their bone marrow transplant, in addition to two other chemotherapy drugs given before the transplant.
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer ...
The spread of diseases from land animals to sea otters and other marine mammals is aided and abetted by gelatinous, sticky polymers produced by seaweed, reports a research team headed by a UC Davis veterinary infectious-disease expert.
These large, complex molecules form slimy biofilms and bind water-borne organic matter into larger particles, in which disease-causing microorganisms can become embedded and introduced to the marine food chain, the researchers discovered.
Using the parasite Toxoplasma gondii as a model, they showed how these sticky polymers increase the ...
Rochester, MN, October 7, 2014 – Numerous randomized clinical trials have shown the effectiveness of the two major forms of smoking cessation treatment – behavioral support and medication - in helping smokers quit. Researchers have now demonstrated that this approach can successfully translate to the "real world" and that a combination of the two treatments offers almost a threefold chance of success over attempts to quit without using a cessation aid. Their findings are published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
"Randomized clinical trials have a high internal ...
There is evidence that hunter-gatherers are optimal foragers whose behaviour is influenced by costs associated with foraging, and therefore for example rising the costs of ammunition could potentially help conserving wild animals. However, there has been a paucity of studies on whether the behaviour of bushmeat hunters, like that of consumers, is cost sensitive moneywise.
In Ecuador, ammunition prices rose unexpectedly by 300 per cent in early 2009, because of a tax imposed by the national Government. This happened right when Anders Sirén, then postdoc researcher ...
Adolescence is often a turbulent time, and it is marked by substantially increased rates of depressive symptoms, especially among girls. New research indicates that this gender difference may be the result of girls' greater exposure to stressful interpersonal events, making them more likely to ruminate, and contributing to their risk of depression.
The findings are published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
"These findings draw our focus to the important role of stress as a potential causal factor in the development ...
The human and environmental dangers posed by a widely used manufacturing technique could be almost eradicated thanks to research led by Plymouth University.
Fibre-reinforced polymer matrix composites are painted or sprayed onto products to provide a high-quality finish in transport applications, chemical plants, renewable energy systems and pipelines.
But that finishing process causes the vapours of a volatile organic compound – styrene, found in polyesters and vinyl-esters – to be emitted, posing potential health and wellbeing risks to the workforces involved ...
Scientists from the University of Leeds have taken a crucial step forward in bio-nanotechnology, a field that uses biology to develop new tools for science, technology and medicine.
The new study, published in print today in the journal Nano Letters, demonstrates how stable 'lipid membranes' – the thin 'skin' that surrounds all biological cells – can be applied to synthetic surfaces.
Importantly, the new technique can use these lipid membranes to 'draw' – akin to using them like a biological ink – with a resolution of 6 nanometres (6 billionths ...
VIDEO:
The Arctic and the Antarctic are regions that have a lot of ice and acts as air conditioners for the Earth system. This year, Antarctic sea ice reached a record...
Click here for more information.
Sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high extent this year, covering more of the southern oceans than it has since scientists began a long-term satellite record to map sea ice extent in the late 1970s. The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about ...
Stretch sensors in our muscles participate in reflexes that serve the subconscious control of posture and movement. According to a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, these sensors respond weakly to muscle stretch caused by one's voluntary action, and most strongly to stretch that is imposed by external forces. The ability to reflect causality in this manner can facilitate appropriate reflex control and accurate self-perception.
"The results of the study show that stretch receptors in our muscles indicate more than which limb is moving or how fast; these ...
Just like adjusting a watch, the key to accurately telling evolutionary time is based upon periodically calibrating against a gold standard.
Scientists have long used DNA data to develop molecular clocks that measure the rate at which DNA changes, i.e., accumulates mutations, as a premiere tool to peer into the past evolutionary timelines for the lineage of a given species. In human evolution, for example, molecular clocks, when combined with fossil evidence, have helped trace the time of the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans to 5-7 million years ago, and ...
