AEGiS-14IAC: The opportunity of disclosure and the process of telling to HIV children and adolescents.

14th International AIDS Conference

Barcelona, Spain - July 7-12, 2002

The opportunity of disclosure and the process of telling to HIV children and adolescents.

Int Conf AIDS 2002 Jul 7-12; 14:(abstract no. WeOrF1326)

Chirila O, Petrea S, Cotoanta V, Voicu I
The Institute of Infectious Diseases Matei Bals, Bucharest, Romania

BACKGROUND: HIV status is still associated with guilt, secrecy, social stigma and discrimination. Many parents still believe they protect their HIV positive children keeping the secret of diagnosis and they are resisting to disclosure. Some of them are terrified about the children's reaction - exposure to a very painful experience, the ostracization at school and in the community, the ignorance and what next after telling, uncertainly about how disclosure.

METHODS: In the Day Clinic we registered till now 985 HIV infected children. They are 1-16 years old, most of them between 12-14 years. One psychologist and four social workers perform the psychosocial activities related to disclosure. At the beginning of the study only 27% of our patients knew their diagnosis. We established specific criteria for admission. Started with 2001 we included 64 HIV infected children. We applied art-therapy method, using free or thematic drawing technique, game's activities permitting the communication, disclosing their deep emotional experiences.

RESULTS: Disclosure was done for 30 children from the target group. For 34 of them, in the process of telling we decided to delay the disclosure. Two of them had negative reactions like anger, sadness, fear, betrayal, self-isolation that were solved in time. No suicidal intension was registered. 28 had positive reactions as understanding of what HIV means and the whole family dynamics was orientated to a kind of normality: the tensions caused by the secrecy, the negative emotions related to the unknown illness decreased or disappeared.

CONCLUSIONS: Helping children know their own diagnosis it's not only a right issue, but also one of trust, need and responsibility. After the disclosure their attitudes towards clinical process was better and the compliance to the ARV treatment improved.

Keywords: AEGIS, HIV Infections, Disclosure, HIV Seropositivity, Confidentiality, Parents, Child Psychology, Parent-Child Relations, Communication, Guilt, Self Disclosure, Adolescent Psychology, Art, Child, Adolescent, Human, Adolescence, Diagnosis

020707
WeOrF1326