Aids
Growing up as a teenager in today's society is not as easy as it may have been in generations past. Young adults of today's era face many social and environmental issues that plague them with immense stress. For example, violence among youth and, more specifically, school shootings and gang violence strike fear among every adolescent's mind before they face each day at school. And the pressure from peers for using and abusing illegal drugs is as strong as it has ever been. But today, the youth of America are faced with a crisis unique to the modern era; the soaring rate of adolescent AIDS infection. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV, causes the terminal Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. AIDS weakens the body's immune system to a point where any ordinary infection, such as the flu or common cold, can cause death. Originally thought of as a "Gay-Man's" disease when AIDS was first prevalent in this country in the early eighties, AIDS is now recognized as a major crisis across the country among heterosexuals, in addition to the homosexual population of this country (Mays, Albee, & Schneider, 1989). And in recent years, the rate of occurrence of AIDS among America's youth has increased at an almost exponential rate.
Unlike the junior high course, where more emphasis was put on teaching students decision-making skills, the high school level program focuses more on sexual activity and stresses the advantages of abstinence. Having a prevention program based on the encouragement of abstinence is the best type of primary prevention to implement in the situation of the reduction of the spreading of AIDS. The patient may develop depression after learning of their illness. One obvious negative physiological consequence of an AIDS patient is that he or she is going to die. According to these statistics, up until now, previous interventions for containing and reducing the prevalence of AIDS have not worked. Another mental condition that may develop from illness is known as the "Health Belief Model. In the fifth grade, a time in a child's life where they become attracted to the opposite sex, a basic sex-education course should be implemented into the curriculum. The high school level program is usually put into effect in the ninth grade and is also taught by teachers from each respective school. Regardless of the cause, helplessness is a very big step in the wrong direction for AIDS's sufferers because they have come to the realization that they can't help that they're going to die and thus, they give up on any hope to keep fighting. Along with teaching about the dangers of unprotected sex, the course will also inform students of the use of protection (including condoms, spermicide, etc. This program will run from the fifth grade all the way up to the ninth grade. Another psychological condition that is a negative consequence of AIDS is "self-efficacy". Also, seventy-seven percent of the students have never had sex, and of those who have had sex, fifty-one percent say they are considering abstinence and twenty-six percent committed to abstinence. AIDS patients view themselves as creatures that do not have the capability to fulfill any task due to their failing physical condition. After being diagnosed with HIV or AIDS, the patient is subject to many psychological conditions that are detrimental to his or her physical health, too.
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