Almanza AAM, Flores PMF

Language: Spanish
References: 0
Page: 247-267
PDF size: 336.29 Kb.

ABSTRACT

Access to antiretroviral treatment has allowed the questioning of common sense knowledge about HIV that legitimizes social and historical process of stigma and discrimination. This resignification of illness experience can be generated across time by the patient among the members of his family that accompany and support him in the long-term manage of HIV infection. To explore the meanings given to HIV-infection in this historical moment of access to antiretroviral treatment, interviews were carried out to ten families whom assisted to primary care centers. The purpose of the interviews was the construction of their illness narratives as a means to understand the way they assimilated the diagnosis, adapted to life with treatment and how HIV-related stigma affected their lives. Most of the families, after crossing trough the diagnosis process, moved to the chronic phase where they could include the antiretroviral treatment as a part of their daily life and normalize it, required condition for the emergence of new meanings about HIV. Nevertheless, HIV-related stigma manifested in different moments of the course of infection, an oppressive situation that restricts the access to social support and generates emotional discomfort. The findings suggest the importance of listening to families voices to adapt psychological services to the changes during the course of infection and the necessity to attend the social consequences of illness in the health services.