Unprotected sex is an anti-depressant, claim doctors
By Roger Dobson
Sunday, 19 May 2002
At last, the proof the world has been waiting for sex is an anti-depressant.
Researchers have discovered that women who have sex frequently are less depressed, but it is not down to the joy of sex itself, it's the result of the effects of mood-changing chemicals trans- ferred from the man.
They say that hormones and other chemicals in semen get into the woman's bloodstream and may act like an anti-depressant.
In research being published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour this week, psychologists logged the sexual activities and depression scores of 300 women.
What the researchers found was that women who had sex without condoms were less depressed than both women who had protected sex and women who abstained. What's more, it was only the women who had unprotected sex who became more depressed the longer they went without sex.
Women who had unprotected sex were also the least likely to have tried to kill themselves. Only 4.5 per cent of them had attempted suicide, compared to 13.2 per cent of condom users and 13.5 per cent of abstainers.
"As further evidence that sexual intercourse per se has no effect on depressive symptoms, it is important to note that depression scores for females who abstained from sex did not differ from those who were sexually active and using condoms," says the report from doctors at New York University.
