Experience of Forced Sex & Subsequent Sexual, Drug & Mental Health Outcomes: African American & Hispanic Women in the Southeastern United States

This cross-sectional study examined African American and Hispanic women's (N = 1,509) self-reports of unwanted forced sex and its association with behavioral and mental health outcomes after the event.

Twenty percent of the women had experienced forced sex (first occurrence at age 15 years or younger for 10%, first occurrence at older than 15 years of age for 10%).

Regardless of when forced sex first occurred, women were more likely to have engaged in unprotected vaginal and anal sex, to have had multiple unprotected sex partners, to have sexually transmitted infections, to have reported binge drinking and illicit drug use, and to exhibit distress and have received mental health counseling.

Forced sex may have wide-ranging behavioral and mental health consequences years later.

Via:  http://ht.ly/Sqtv4 

By: Jones D1, Marks G2, Villar-Loubet O1, Weiss SM1, O'Daniels C3, Borkowf CB2, Simpson C4, Adimora AA5, McLellan-Lemal E2.

• 1Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
• 2Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
• 3Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA ; Carter Consulting Inc., Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
• 4School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA.
• 5Division of Infectious Diseases, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.