Research & Innovation

While working at a centre for gay and lesbian youth several years ago, clinical psychologist Trevor Hart noticed something significant: many of the young men he was treating were HIV-positive but kept quiet about their status.

“They were quite hesitant to tell anybody for fear they would be discriminated against or negatively evaluated,”he says. He also found that many young men, regardless of their HIV status, were embarrassed to talk about condom use during sexual encounters. Both behaviours, he realized, were expressions of “social anxiety” — anxiety about being evaluated by others.

Hart went on to show that social anxiety — an emotional state that all people experience to varying degrees — is associated with risky sex for gay men. “We found that if you are an HIV-positive gay man who has higher social anxiety, you are not only more likely to have unprotected insertive anal intercourse, you’re actually more likely to have it with people you know are not HIV-positive.”As HIV is more likely to be transmitted by the insertive partner, it’s a very significant finding. Hart is now working to understand why social anxiety contributes to risky sex. Understanding, after all, may be the first step toward effective interventions that reduce the risk of HIV transmission.

That’s just one of the many studies under Hart’s leadership at the Ryerson HIV Prevention Lab. Other projects explore topics such as the decisions HIV-positive women make about becoming pregnant, the impact of beliefs about HIV medications on transmission risk, and risks related to the sexual behaviours of adolescents and young adults in the city of Pune, India.

Hart says Ryerson is the ideal location for his research. “I’ve always been interested in understanding the applications of research, and that’s also a strength here.”The downtown location is close to top teaching hospitals and accessible for many at-risk populations. Best of all, he is surrounded by other committed and creative researchers. “Our department is growing by leaps and bounds,” he says. “We have excellent senior faculty members, amazing young faculty members and a wonderful new graduate program. It’s a very collegial and exciting environment to work in.”

* This article is excerpted from Intersections, the magazine about Ryerson research and innovation. To see the full issue, visit Ryerson's Research Portal at: http://www.ryerson.ca/research/portal.html