Increase in adolescent sexual activity is a phenomenon noticed in modern
societies, as well as in Serbia. The sexual activity reveals new health
related problems, in relation to the unpremeditated pregnancies and sexually
transmitted diseases. Reproductive health is vulnerable especially in case
of persons having first sexual experiences being adolescent, what could be
explained by the physical immaturity and psychosocial infirmity to be
responsible in sexual behaviour. The study of 300 sexually active adolescent
women aged 19, attending The Youth Advisory Center of The Mother and Child
Health Care Institute of Serbia was conducted between 1995 - 1997. The aim
of this study was to evaluate how much the reproductive health in this
population was endangered, by analyzing their sexual behavior, their
attitudes in the spheres of sexuality and reproduction, as well as some
variables of social microenvironments that might be relevant to adolescent
sexual behavior. Questionnaire included investigation of youth opinion about
some acceptable social measures in this field. According to the results of
this study the adolescents reproductive health is seriously endangered.
Interwieved adolescent females most frequently used traditional birth
control methods, like coitus interruptus (54,3%), and often didn't think
about the risk of acquiring sexually transmitted disesase (with new sexual
partner the regular condom use was reported only in case of 55,6% girls).
Adolescent girls had also poor health behaviors so that 31,0% of interviewed
adolescent females visited gynecologist for the first time not earlier than
one to three years after their first sexual experience. That resulted in
large number of unplanned pregnancies (16,0% of interwieved girls had one or
more induced abortions) and, possibly, a high prevalence of sexually
transmitted infections. The model of sexual behavior, that was accepted by
adolescent females was partly due to the lack of adolescents knowledge about
sexuallity, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases. Improper were
the main sources of relevant knowledge (peers, parents, mass media),
therefore, youth had many misconceptions in this sphere (about the
harmfulness of modern contraception, reliability of coitus interruptus
method, lack of risk for sexually transmitted diseases transmission). The
social adolescent sexual and reproductive health programme doesn't exist in
Serbia. Parents of adolescent females were passive, and school and health
care workers are not engaged in these matters enough. The possibility for
social intervention programme exists, because young people were willing to
improve their knowledge about sexuality and reproduction (83,3%) mostly by
sex education in schools (51,0%) and through mass media (33,3%). The most
appreciated sources of relevant knowledge would be physicians (67,0%), from
whom they expect to have time and patience for them and their problems
(91,3%).
Correction for "Impacts of Abstinence Education on Teen Sexual Activity, Risk of Pregnancy, and Risk of Sexually Transmitted Diseases," by Christopher Trenholm et al., Vol. 27, No. 2, 255–276 (2008)
