I just read the article.
The author seems full of shit to me. NONE of the characteristics or what she calls mental health consequences of multiple sex partners ring true. Sex with many people is just a part of my life, no more or less significant than any other part. She states what people thought in the past were correlations between multiple partners and says that now we have no idea if those things were true. Sex with multiple partners is NOT necessarily high risk.
An international team of mental health researchers headed by Dunedin School of Medicine’s Sandhya Ramrakha and colleagues (2013) were uniquely positioned to test the causal directions of the multiple sex partner-mental health connections. The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study was begun in the mid-1970s with a cohort of over 1,000 children. They were followed every two years until they were 15 and then again at ages 18, 21, 26, and 32. An amazingly large percentage (96%) remained available for testing over that 30-year period. At ages 21, 26, and 32, they were given individual assessments on their mental health status in the areas of anxiety, depression, and substance (cannabis and/or alcohol) dependence. They were asked to report on the number of sex partners at each interval as well, allowing the researchers to compute the number of partners per year. With these data in hand, Ramrakha and team were able to calculate the odds of a participant developing a psychological disorder while controlling for earlier mental health problems at each test occasion.
For both men and women, taking into account prior psychological disorders, the odds of developing substance dependence increased virtually linearly with the number of sex partners. The relationship was particularly pronounced, however, for women. People having a higher number of sex partners did not have higher rates of anxiety or depression; the mental health associations were limited to substance use.
Quite frankly, I do not trust her data or the statement that "An amazingly large percentage (96%) remained available for testing over that 30-year period." That would be MUCH better retention than in the Framingham heart study which began in the late 1940s. It's just NOT BELIEVABLE. Studies relying on self reporting of data is EXTREMELY POOR and those studies have VERY POOR RELIABILITY. This study is a series of case reports with no controls and has THE LOWEST degree of reliability. The best studies are ones using systematic reviews finding all available studies on the topics and compiling and analyzing the results. Next down the list are studies using meta-analysis of data from many studies. Further down the list are double blind studies. Below that are randomized control studies, below that Cohort studies, below that are case control studies and at the VERY BOTTOM OF THE LIST ARE CASE SERIES and case reports--WHICH IS WHAT HER STUDY WAS -- BASICALLY IT WAS SHIT.
OK, enough with my criticism of her experimental design. Onward with her dubious findings.
She stated
. . . .some participants reported more than 10 in a given year. . . .
people living a risky lifestyle have a higher number of sex partners and, later on, develop mental health problems. It’s also possible that people who are having sex with multiple partners are in situations where alcohol and drugs are around, and therefore, will be the ones to develop substance dependence over time.
That is ridiculous. She also stated that people with many sex partners do it for emotional fulfillment. I did it for the fun of it and expect most people do it for the same reason. My husband, then boyfriend and I were seeing many different people in high school, where I had sex with about 15 boys. There was no emotion in that. It was pure hedonism and my dominance over boys that I thought could be fun in bed. In college I had sex with a few women and about 60-70 men during those four years. My husband had sex with about half as many women. There were many friends with benefits. Furthermore, as a person who never smoked a tobacco or marijuana cigarette and drank alcohol very moderately, the substance abuse point is grossly incorrect.
At the end of the article, she has the balls to say:
The upshot of this fascinating study is that if you or someone you know is involved in a series of casual or fleeting relationships, there may be alcohol or drug dependence issues down the road. Women in particular might want to consider their reasons for becoming involved in frequent sexual pairings, and even more importantly, their feelings the morning after. The purpose of research such as this is not to scold people for having multiple partners or add to the guilt of those who already feel that they’re violating their own moral standards. Instead, it’s to point out that, from a strictly scientific standpoint, engaging in frequent sex with multiple partners does seem to be associated with risk.
WHAT BULLSHIT. Any risk has to do with how you engage and prepare for sex with multiple partners -- not HAVING sex with multiple partners.
I never had what would be called a regret the next morning after sex because I always made sure I would have a good time in bed, although there were guys who were lousy lovers. As I mentioned earlier, there were guys who was assholes, but they also had characteristics that made me want to have sex with them, and I used some of them for all they were worth to have a good time in bed. I was NEVER taken advantage of.
The author, Susan Whitbourne, got her PhD in 2013 and this article was published in 2013. I hope she didn't use this as her thesis for her PhD. At Columbia the professors on her PhD committee would have fried her ass in the dissertation and defense of her thesis.