Teaching About AIDS: Youth With Sensory or Physical Disabilities (From AIDS Challenge: Prevention Education for Young People, P 419-427, 1988, Marcia Quackenbush, et al, eds. -- See NCJ-117621)

• NCJ Number: 117637
• Author(s): K M Simpson
• Date Published: 1988
• Length: 9 pages
• Sale Source: Network Publications
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Youth with sensory or physical disabilities should receive explicit and specialized information about AIDS prevention, rather than just the curriculum for able-bodied students.

Abstract

However, adults often have a difficult time imagining that young people with disabilities could or should be sexually active. Although this assumption may protect adults from some awkwardness and schools or community groups from greater controversies, it is a dangerous disservice to disabled youth. The lack of sex education, the negative messages about their own sexuality, and the social difficulties sometimes posed by their disabilities can make physically disabled teenagers especially likely to engage in risk-taking behavior. Like other youths, they may also engage in high-risk behaviors because they are emotionally troubled. They should receive basic information about sexuality before AIDS and its prevention are discussed. AIDS education should include discussions of myths about AIDS and should be explicit. Classroom discussions should also focus on how all people can communicate about sexuality, because communication is crucial to safer sex, greater intimacy, and effective AIDS prevention. 5 references.