Adolescence, as well as being signified by puberty, is a time of growth, exploration, and discovering one’s place in the world. Exploring and understanding sexuality is part of this, as is taking risks, both of which grow a young persons understanding of themselves in the world and exponentially increase a young person’s exposure to emotional and physical vulnerability and harms such as sexually transmitted diseases.
There is considerable research showing an increasing number of young people are getting their sexual health knowledge from pornographic material. It is crucial to support young people to access alternate accurate and balanced information and resource them to develop healthy sexuality.
In the same way practitioners support young people to develop and maintain optimum mental and physical health, so to do we need to understand practical ways to support resilience in sexual health.