Severely mentally ill women's HIV risk: the influence of social support, substance use, and contextual risk factors.

In structured interviews with 96 women with severe mental illness, nearly two-thirds had not used condoms during sexual intercourse in the past 3 months, more than two-thirds had sex with multiple partners, and almost one-third had been treated for a sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the past year. Women who reported fewer sexual risk context factors, such as having sex with someone the participant did not know or transactional sex, had fewer sexual partners. Larger social support networks were associated with less frequent sex after drug use. In turn, women who less often had sex after using drugs had unprotected intercourse less frequently.