Teaching safe sex practices to psychiatric patients.

An occupational therapist presented her 45-minute program called AIDS Education and Safe Sex 5 times to female mental patients in the locked ward of Cedarcrest Regional Hospital in Newington, Connecticut, to inform them about safe-sex practices and AIDS. She first administered a pretest then spoke briefly about AIDS and safe-sex practices. The lecture emphasized various important points such as no cure for AIDS exist, casual contact (e.g., kiss on the cheek, handshake) cannot transmit HIV, and effectiveness of using latex condoms. The occupational therapist spent much of her time addressing myths about AIDS and what safe-sex practices are. The patients discussed sexual abuse and dishonest partners. She administered a posttest which was the same as the pretest. Some sessions attracted more people than did other sessions. Test scores increased for every patient and for every session. They ranged from a 5% (68-73%) increase for the 3rd session to a 24% (67-91%) increase for the last session. She was not able to determine, however, whether the increased knowledge would translate into positive behavioral changes. Patients' psychiatric symptoms may have interfered with learning resulting in less than ideal improvements in knowledge. These symptoms were hypomanic behavior, restlessness, and distractibility. Perhaps other sessions with experiential techniques (e.g., putting condoms on dummies) would increase their understanding. This program helps fill the information gap not provided by the mass media which avoid mentioning safe-sex practices.