University students, who engage in casual sex - having intercourse with someone whom you have known for less than a week -suffer from higher levels of general anxiety, social anxiety and depression, researchers have claimed.
3,900 straight students in the age group of 18 and 25 from 30 different US colleges were questioned about their sex lives and mental well-being.
The researchers found that people who recently engaged in casual sex seemed to have low levels of self-esteem, happiness and life-satisfaction than others who didn't hook-up with a relative stranger in last 1 month, the New York Daily News reported.
Lead author Melina Bersamin of California State University, Sacramento said in a statement that it's premature to say that casual sexual poses no harmful psychological risks for young adults.
She added that the results study suggested that casual sex was negatively associated with well-being and positively linked to psychological distress.
The study has been published in The Journal of Sex Research.