Sexual education and adolescents: a systematic review and meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

Objective. Sexuality plays a significant role in human mental and physical health, well-being, and overall life satisfaction. Unfortunately, misinformation and lack of awareness remain barriers to access essential healthcare for adolescents. As a result of numerous scientific studies, many experts have reached the consensus that maintaining adolescents’ sexual health requires comprehensive and scientifically accurate education and healthcare services. Therefore, the purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to evaluate the impact of sexual education on the sexual health of adolescents.

Materials and Methods. The search was conducted in electronic databases including PubMed, Scopus, the Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, and ClinicalTrials.gov. 9 research articles, resulting in a total of 17 667 patients, that evaluated the impact of sexual education on the sexual knowledge of adolescent girls and boys, sexual initiation, unwanted pregnancy, abortions, and sexually transmitted diseases were included in this systematic review.

Results. The analysis of included studies presented that sexual education improves knowledge of contraception methods among adolescents (p < 0.00001) and the rate of unwanted pregnancies (p = 0.02), but no significant difference was obtained assessing the level of contraception use (p = 0.39) and the sexual experience (p = 0.11).

Conclusions. According to the results of our systematic review and meta-analysis, we emphasize the importance of sexual education and healthy lifestyle promotion in families and schools in early adolescence to improve adolescents’ knowledge of contraceptive methods and reduce the incidence of unwanted pregnancies. However, further research is needed to gain a deeper understanding of the topic.