An Assessment of Attitudes of Mental Health Counselors Toward Persons with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

An Assessment of Attitudes of Mental Health Counselors Toward Persons with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
Author: Terri Jo Christenson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1995
Genre: AIDS (Disease)
ISBN:

This study investigated the attitudes of mental health counselors toward persons with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Three hundred and fifty-eight members of the American Mental Health Counselors Association were mailed a survey packet including an Attitude Towards AIDS Victims scale and an additional two questions assessing comfort with clients with AIDS. Demographic information was also collected. There were 255 useable surveys, for a response rate of 72%. The results of the survey indicated that gender was not a significant independent variable in the attitudes of the mental health counselors. Professional and/or personal contacts with a person with AIDS were highly predictive of positive attitudes. Sexual orientation of the respondent was also highly significant as was personal acquaintance with a gay male or lesbian. Formal AIDS training of one hour or more showed a significant relationship with attitudes of mental health counselors toward persons with AIDS, with the relationship becoming more significant at 11 or more hours. The study indicated that mental health counselors are largely uninvolved in providing mental health treatment to persons with AIDS, with 5% of the subjects providing 70% of the services. Recommendations follow regarding preservice and inservice AIDS training and the need for mental health counselors to be more proactive in the AIDS epidemic.

Therapists on the Front Line

Therapists on the Front Line
Author: Steven A. Cadwell
Publisher: American Psychiatric Publishing
Total Pages: 656
Release: 1994
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN:

Despite lessening media attention, AIDS is still the leading cause of death among gay men in the United States. Although research and medical discoveries are producing vast amounts of biological information, less is known about the complex psychosocial pattern involved in preventing transmission of HIV, or about coping with the diagnosis of HIV infection and the development of disease. Therapists on the Front Line: Psychotherapy With Gay Men in the Age of AIDS explores how the AIDS epidemic has affected psychotherapists, their patients, and the therapeutic relationship. The book uses a multidimensional approach that includes psychodynamic, social, cultural, medical, and political factors. Therapists on the Front Line: Psychotherapy With Gay Men in the Age of AIDS is divided into five sections: * General Issues * Treatment Modalities * Specific Treatment Populations* Impact on the Therapist * When the Therapist Has HIV Disease

Coping with HIV Infection

Coping with HIV Infection
Author: Lena Nilsson Schönnesson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1461546818

"I'm like a whirling leaf in the wind," said one of Dr. Lena Nilsson SchOnnesson' s patients, and another "I'm in the claws of HIV." Their voices and those of other HIV-positive patients frame the humanistic and scholarly discussion in this impor tant book. Dr. SchOnnesson, a Fulbright scholar at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, Columbia University in 1995, has unusually extensive clinical experience in counseling HIV-positive gay men. Her work with 38 such patients treated between 1986 and 1995 is discussed in the pages that follow. Dr. SchOnnesson's longitudinal approach to clinical data is extremely unusual in the psychotherapy literature generally, and in the literature on counseling HIV positive men in particular. Building upon the experience of such recent scholar clinicians as Klitzman, Isay, Schaffner, and others, Dr. SchOnnesson adds some thing unique by analyzing her ongoing detailed notes of the psychotherapeutic process in a systematic quantitative as well as qualitative manner. The analysis of her data is further informed by her coauthor, Dr. Michael Ross, a therapist and investigator whose contribution to the clinical and research literature on the psychotherapeutic treatment of gay men has already been substantial.

Couples of Mixed HIV Status

Couples of Mixed HIV Status
Author: R Dennis Shelby
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1136406727

Examine the unique emotional challenges and issues that face couples of mixed HIV status today! Previous books on this subject—mostly written in the days when HIV/AIDS was considered a fatal rather than a chronic disease—focused on end-of-life issues. However, Couples of Mixed HIV Status: Clinical Issues and Interventions addresses the unique emotional challenges facing today’s couples of mixed HIV status and provides a conceptual framework for assessment and intervention. The book offers examples of how to apply emotionally focused couple therapy to help them work through issues including disclosure, the fear of HIV transmission, shifts in emotional intimacy, family planning, betrayal, mistrust, and uncertainty. This unique work, its knowledge base, and the interventions you'll find inside, are applicable to any practitioner who provides couple and family therapy—as well as any practitioner who counsels around issues of chronic illness. Couples of Mixed HIV Status provides therapists with a range of theoretical approaches to help mixed HIV status couples deal with their issues and concerns. It includes applications of couple therapy approaches that have proved to be particularly effective as well as case studies that demonstrate how different relationship variables may affect therapy. The book presents the findings of a research study involving 44 mixed HIV status couples in the Northeast and is generously illustrated with tables that make complex research results easy to access and understand. Topics covered in Couples of Mixed HIV Status include: various approaches to couples therapy the historical context of HIV/AIDS HIV transmission family planning and HIV/AIDS emotionally focused couple therapy disclosure issues attachment theory and much more! Couples of Mixed HIV Status: Clinical Issues and Interventions is a valuable resource for therapists and other mental health counselors working with today’s couples of mixed HIV status as well as for students of counseling and health related services. Readers who may be in a mixed HIV status relationship or those who are friends and family members of couples living with HIV will also find this book helpful.

What Every Therapist Should Know about AIDS

What Every Therapist Should Know about AIDS
Author: Samuel Knapp
Publisher: Professional Resource Press
Total Pages: 84
Release: 1990
Genre: AIDS (Disease)
ISBN:

Addresses the common psychological and neurological symptoms that accompany AIDS in adults and children, special considerations when counseling AIDS patients and their families, and techniques for diagnosing and treating AIDS-phobic individuals.