Homeless Young Adults and Sexual Behavior

The statistics of runaway children is staggering. Virtually one in every seven children (ages 10 through 18) will run away from home. Currently, the United States has millions of young adults roaming the streets homeless and alone. A recent study made by the UCLA AIDS Institute has concluded that when young adults run away, thereby abandoning their traditional family setting for settings like a friend’s house or on the streets, they are more likely to take more risks sexually. Naturally, any type of drug use can only compound the risk.

In an unprecedented study, the UCLA AIDS Institute focused their research on young adults who only recently became homeless. Their definition of homeless was being away from their home for anywhere from one day to six months. In addition to drug use, the study also considered several other variables that could have played a part in contributing to risky sexual behavior, including mental health and sociodemographics. Lead researcher and member of the UCLA AIDS Institute Dr. M. Rosa Solorio states “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.” These structural factors are vital, she says, in order to help decrease the risky sexual behavior which can lead to unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

The two-year study reached over 250 homeless young adults (all between ages 12 and 20) in the Los Angeles area. Interviews conducted discussed mental health, drug use, living situations, safe sex and number of sexual encounters/partners. When the study began, approximately 77% admitted being sexually active. That percentage grew to 85% at the end of the two-year study. The women in the study were found to engage in riskier sexual activity and to be less prone to using condoms when drugs were involved. The men in the study engaged in more frequent sexual activity with several different partners when drugs were involved or when they did not reside with family. In addition, in terms of race issues, those Latin women who were born inside or outside of the U.S. were not as likely as women of other races to have several sexual partners. Researchers concluded that the use of drugs and living situations were the most impacting variables in determining risky sexual behavior; thus, according to one researcher, it is imperative “to help youth find housing associated with supervision and social support as well as aim to reduce drug use.”