Many Living with HIV suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
August 23, 2010
A new study has found that one-third gay and bisexual men who are living with HIV suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.
The NHS Foundation Trust in London conducted the survey to be published in the journal AIDS Patient Care and STDs. Survey 100 gay and bisexual men, researchers found a third had symptoms associated with PTSD, which include depression, guilt, flashbacks, addiction and physical discomfort such as headaches.
PTSD can result from those who have witnessed or experienced a traumatizing life event.
Many soldiers returning home from combat overseas suffer from PTSD brought on from the effects of war.
Researchers learned that beginning anti-retroviral treatment can trigger the disorder. Those living with HIV can suffer stigma and live with the fear of possibly transmitting the disease onto a partner. Many worry their sex lives will suffer if they continuously reveal their positive status.
Researchers found that the realization HIV carriers will have to take medication for the rest of their lives triggers anxiety and stress.
"Such appraisals could include catastrophic expectations about the limitations a medication regime may impose on social or occupational functioning thus leading to traumatic fear, or the perceived failure of alternative medicines and lifestyle remedies leading to traumatic helplessness," said researchers.
Matthew Hodson, head of programmes at the gay men’s health charity GMFA, called for more community among gay men and said living with HIV causes great emotional stress.
“If you become infected, you will probably have to take medication every day for the rest of your life to keep your immune system functioning. In addition to anxieties over treatment failure, or fear of how it will affect their social and work lives, people with HIV have to deal with stigmatisation. There is the constant knowledge that there will always be the possibility of them infecting partners. If they discuss their status with partners, they face rejection. If they don’t discuss their status, they are vilified.
“Amongst my own friends, I see how devastating it can be to be diagnosed positive, and how starting medication in itself is often traumatic. We need to get to a point where, as gay men, we are supportive of each other and where we can openly discuss HIV status and safer sex.”
