Perceived HIV stigma and perceived social support among people living with HIV

Description

Page: 1485-1488

Kumari Divya Singh (P. G. Department of Psychology, Veer Kunwar Singh University, Ara, Bihar)

HIV stigma constitutes a major stressor for People living with HIV/ AIDS that negatively influence their health and well-being. Social support serves to protect the individual against the negative effects of stressor and may aid in better adjustment as well as improved quality of life. The present study is an attempt to compare the types and sources of perceived social support across high, moderate and low levels of perceived HIV- stigma. A cross-sectional sample of 100 HIV- infected individuals was recruited from ART centre, Sir Sundar Lal Hospital, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. Perceived stigma index and social support Questionnaire were used to assess the types and different sources of social support received by low, moderate and high levels of perceived stigma group of HIV infected individuals. One way ANOVA followed by tukey’s post hoc test was used to draw the level of significance between mean differences to test the hypothesis framed. Result shows that high perceived stigma group (HPSG) has significantly lower assessment of ‘received’ emotional, informational, practical, and companionship support. HPSG also reported substantially low received social support from family than their low perceived stigma counterparts.