Adolescent and AIDS Education

Abstract

HIVIAIDS has been among the most important health problems throughout the world. Education is believed to be the only solution for the disease which still causes to die. Developed countries succeeded to stop the spread of the disease. However, among the developing cuntries disease tends to spread rapidly. Adolescents are considered to be a risk group for contracting the disease due to the facts such as risky sexual behaviours, unwillingness to use condoms, increasing intravenous drug use and a developmental characteristic called as "personal fable" which is thinking "bad things don’t happen to me". The fact that mass media presented people with HIVIAIDS as extraordinary people has reinforced adolescent's thinking "bad things don’t happen to me" and created "the other image". The purpose of AIDS education for adolescents is to prevent them from meeting the disease. Primarily, education initiations aim to determine adolescents' level of knowledge about AIDS. The research indicates that adolescents for the most part are aware of AIDS, but they have lack of information about the disease. While discussing the content of AIDS education for adolescents, the assessment of education has been emphasized. Not the increase of the knowledge between prior and after education but achievement of healthy, responsible sexual behaviours is thought to be more important for the assessment of AIDS education. In this survey, examples of AIDS education for adolescents and some suggestions are presented.