Category: AIDS/HIV Articles
Evolving Realities of Quality of Life
Being diagnosed with any chronic and potentially life-threatening illness can be a powerful motivation to examine your life and grapple with how to define what is meaningful. One of the most vague, and yet crucial, areas for such self-examination is determining how to increase your quality of life. As a long term HIV-positive non-progressor, this […]
Eight Years of Working With People With HIV: The Impact Upon a Therapist
Tony was a 33 year old attorney whose response to the sudden and unexpected breakup of his seven-year relationship was to call in sick to work and spend a week drinking, using drugs, and having anonymous sex several times daily. One morning, frightened that he was placing his job in jeopardy and feeling that his […]
DESIGNING EFFECTIVE AIDS PREVENTION WORKSHOPS FOR GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN
The authors have developed three AIDS prevention workshops and conducted them for thousands of gay and bisexual men. The workshops’ evolution, design, and development, as well as their implicit assumptions and values, are presented. The concept of different generations of AIDS prevention efforts is introduced. The goals of each generation are distinguished and discussed. One […]
Dying Well: Counseling End Stage Clients With AIDS
There is no debating that death touches every individual and family, and that contemporary American society is unmistakenly a death denying culture. For confirmation of this fact think of the terms used as euphemisms for dying: “gone to meet his or her maker;” “gone on to a better place;” “made his or her transition;” “passed […]
Counseling Chemically Dependent People With HIV Illness
By October, 1993, more than 80,000 heterosexual intravenous drug users had been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States. This group represents 24% of the nation’s AIDS caseload. Six percent of the gay and bisexual men reported a history of injecting drugs, making a full 31% of all AIDS cases related to intravenous drug use. […]
COPING WITH THE HOLIDAYS WITH AIDS/HIV
Beginning around the second week of November a rather common ailment begins to manifest itself throughout North America. At the onset its symptoms may be vague, but can become quite specific and usually worsen through December, only ending in early or mid-January. This condition affects PWAs, seropositives as well as seronegatives, gay and straight. A […]
Challenges and Dilemmas Regarding Protease Inhibitors
“I’ve been living for the past ten years waiting to die. Now with protease inhibitors I have to do a 360 degree turn around at a moment’s notice. If that isn’t a mind fuck, I don’t know what is!” (John, a person living with AIDS in Manhattan) On November 10, 1996 an article authored by […]
Bottled Up: The HIV Treatment Challenge
If you think taking anti-HIV medications is as easy as popping a daily vitamin, think again. Combination treatments for HIV are among the most demanding, inflexible, and “unforgiving” of oral medications. Because of limited bioavailability (the ability of a drug to be absorbed by the body) and short half-life (the period during which a drug […]
AIDS: The Therapist’s Journey
I am a person, also a social worker, who has been living with AIDS since 1982. Although I do not have AIDS myself, the disease and all of the personal and professional issues surrounding it have profoundly influenced my life for over a decade. In 1984 my oldest brother died as a result of AIDS […]
AIDS: Prevention Is the Only Vaccine Available: An AIDS Prevention Educational Program
At the time of writing over 37,386 Americans have been diagnosed with full-blown Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1987). Health officials estimate that for every person with AIDS, there are 10 people with AIDS Related Conditions (ARC) (San Francisco Department of Public Health, 1983). There are estimates that anywhere […]