Depression Blog

Homosexual men with long-term, low-grade depression are almost twice as likely to have had unsafe casual sex in the last six months.



Homosexual men, who have had unsafe casual sex in the last six months, are tend to be with long-term, low-grade depression. Researchers at Adelaide University, Australia have found this. Men who were severely depressed reported less sex overall. It is because serious depression is associated with a lower sex drive. But, when these men were excluded, a clear relationship emerged between unprotected sex and long-term lower grade depression, known as dysthymia.

“Forty percent of the men with dysthymia reported having had unprotected sex in the six months before they joined the Care & Prevention Program, compared with 22% of the men who weren’t dysthymic,” Dr Rogers says. “This is a statistically significant difference.”