Resilience and well-being among adolescents living with HIV infection

Pages: 1646-1650
G. S. Sunaina, Sahen Gupta, and K. Sreenath (Department of Psychology, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, Karnataka)

The capacity to adapt to stress and maintain a positive attitude towards life is necessary for HIV infected adolescents since unhealthy coping with stress leads to mental health issues as well as a rapid deterioration of physical health. As such, resilience is crucial to the prolonged well-being of HIV infected individuals since it fosters better coping with stress. This study aimed to understand the relationship between Resilience and Well-being among HIV infected adolescents, and included boys and girls of the age group 13-18 years (n-46). The sample of adolescents were chosen since development of resilience at this age sets a pattern of better response to stress and greater well-being across the life span. The tools used for this study are Subjective Well-being Inventory (Sell & Nagpal, 1992) and Resilience scale for Children and Adolescents (Prince-Embury, 2008). Descriptive statistics, Pearson Correlation and Independent Sample t-test were used for testing stated hypothesis. Results state that there exists no relationship between the variables Subjective Well-being and Resilience among HIV infected adolescents. It should also be noted that there exists no differences in subjective well-being, in terms of high and low resilience amongst the sample. It is thus recommended that, future research and interventions should take into regard the paradoxical relationship between well-being and resilience operating in individuals with HIV infection.