Young Injecting Drug Users and the Risk of HIV/AIDS

Résumé du livre

The study reported in this thesis is an attempt to redress this lack by exploring the injecting drug use, sexual behaviour and psycho-social contexts within which HIV/AIDS risk behaviours are enacted, in a group of normal (i.e. non-delinquent, non-homeless) young people living in Perth, an isolated capital city on the western seaboard of Australia. Various models have been developed to explain health risk behaviour. Many, such as the Health Belief Model, focus on the individual, and one of the aims of the project was to examine the efficacy of such models to explain the HIV/AIDS risk behaviour of young IDUs. One hundred and five young Perth people who used injectable drugs, 75% of whom were current or recent injectors, were recruited to the study through advertising and snowballing. Each was interviewed individually for at least 90 minutes and paid $20 for participation.