Article Sidebar
Published:
Jun 21, 2013Article Details
http://www.sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/pages/view/policies#part_4
Copyright
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publishing rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose.
AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
Read more here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.
Main Article Content
Mental health and HIV sexual risk behaviour among University of Limpopo students
Abstract
HIV prevention in Africa.
Objective. To determine the association between mental health, substance use and HIV sexual risk behaviour among a sample of university students in South Africa.
Methods. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among undergraduate students who were recruited conveniently from public campus venues at the University of Limpopo Medical University of Southern Africa (Medunsa) campus. The sample included 722 university students (57.6% men and 42.4% women) with a mean age of 21.7 years (standard deviation }8.8).
Results. Of the 722 students, 39.5% reported depression, 23.4% screened positive for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 22% reported hazardous or harmful alcohol use, 33% reported .2 sexual partners in the past 12 months, 50% reported inconsistent condom use, 46% reported unknown HIV status of a sexual partner and 20% reported alcohol use in the context of sex in the past 3 months. In multivariate analysis, HIV risk behaviour was associated with, among men, hazardous or harmful alcohol use and having screened positive for PTSD, and among women, being in the 4th or more year of study and current cannabis use.
Conclusion. Poor mental health, including substance use, was found to be associated with HIV risk behaviour. Co-ordinated mental health and sexual and reproductive health services that meet the needs of university students would be desirable.
