People with HIV can now lead healthy and long lives. Even if their quality of life has improved enormously in recent years due to innovative therapies, there is still a major challenge: HIV-positive people are often confronted with stigmatization and discrimination in everyday life.
What are stigma and discrimination?
In relation to HIV, one speaks of stigmatization when people are put in a negative drawer and condemned solely because of their HIV infection. The term discrimination is a bit more specific and describes the personal discrimination of individuals due to HIV infection.
Where does this blanket negative assessment of people with HIV come from?
The cause is often that a large part of society still has the outdated images from the 1980s in mind: gay HIV-positive people who fell ill with AIDS, could not be treated appropriately at the time and died.
The knowledge about the current possibilities of innovative HIV therapies and about what living with HIV actually means today has not yet reached everyone.
Stigmatization from within
Stigmatization can not only come from the outside, but can also arise from within HIV-positive people. If you blame yourself, feel ashamed or judge yourself for being infected with HIV, this is called self-stigmatization.
What are the effects of stigma and discrimination?
The results of the recently published research project “positive voices 2.0” by the German Aids Aid show that stigmatization and discrimination against people with HIV can also affect their quality of life. More than half of the HIV-positive people reported that prejudices against HIV affect their own lives (1).
For example, many people with HIV are afraid that people around them will find out about their infection. This can lead to certain actions designed to hide HIV status.
This can lead to ongoing, unconscious stress and thus negatively affect quality of life and mental health. At this point at the latest, you should realize that this way of dealing with things is not conducive to your own psychological well-being in the long term.
Finding good ways to deal with HIV
It is advantageous if, as an HIV-positive person, you can deal openly and confidently with your own infection and thus counteract stigmatization and discrimination. Not everyone can or wants to do what is absolutely fine. However, as soon as worries and fears come into play, it is important to be vigilant and speak openly with the doctor.
In addition, as an HIV-positive person, you can look at the wide range of therapy options together with the doctor and discuss whether there is a therapy that better suits your own life and can be more easily integrated into everyday life.
For more information on living with HIV, as well as personal stories from HIV-positive people, visit www.livlife.de
Sources:
(1) German Aidshilfe, “positive voices 2.0” survey on HIV-related discrimination, https://hiv-diskriminierung.de/sites/default/files/documents/broschuere_finale_version.pdf Last accessed: August 2022
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