HIV prevention interventions that have produced reduction in high-risk sexual behaviors among HIV-risk populations have been based on skills training procedures derived from social learning principles, primarily in adult populations. While these types of interventions produced behavior change, they have usually involved comparisons to """"""""no treatment"""""""" groups and not other types of interventions. The proposed study will recruit 90, primarily African American, male adolescents and ninety female adolescents aged 15 through 18 recruited from an inner-city, community based, primary health care facility for participation in an intervention study to assess the effects of cognitive-behavioral skills intervention (e.g., cognitive restructuring, behavior modification techniques, sexual skills instruction, safer sex negotiation and environmental manipulation); skills training with an additional focus on positive sexual self-respect attribution (sexual decision making, positive self attributions about the body, sexuality, personal potential, future, and personal respect/worth); and a comparison/control intervention (e.g., anti-violence skills building, adaptive stress responses, internal and external stressors, stress reactivity, alarm reactions, maladaptive coping mechanisms) on HIV sexual risk reduction. Participants will attend one of three different group interventions: (a) cognitive behavioral skills; (b)positive sexual self-respect attribution skills; (c) comparison/control anti-violence skills development. Thus, the study will use a 2 (male/female) X 3 (behavior cognitive behavioral skills/positive sexual self-respect attribution skills/comparison-control) design with a pre-intervention baseline and 3-month follow-up assessment. It is hypothesized that while both cognitive behavior skills and positive sexual self-respect attribution skills will evidence significant risk reduction, the condition which combines cognitive behavioral skills training with positive sexual self-respect attribution skills will be most effective in reducing HIV risk. Analyses are also expected to show different patterns of effects for males and females, with males reducing risk to a greater degree in the cognitive behavior skills condition and females evidencing greater risk reduction in the positive sexual self-respect attribution skills condition. In addition, questions regarding the relative effects of specific skill components among adolescent males and females will be addressed.
| Bitran, D; Klibansky, D A; Martin, G A (2000) The neurosteroid pregnanolone prevents the anxiogenic-like effect of inescapable shock in the rat. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 151:31-7 |
