Stress is a contributor to illness. Stress lowers the immune system’s ability to fight off viruses.
It is a “vicious circle,” in which people get ill, become stressed, and stress worsens the illness.
Doctors prescribe bed rest not just to allow the body to heal, but so the patient will calm down. .
It follows that a particularly stressful illness like HIV would be a great burden to a person’s mental health. People with HIV have weakened immune systems, and are advised by all means to reduce stress in their lives. This affects the way they earn a living and how they cope with family and personal relationships. Now it is learned from a meeting of mental health professionals in Johannesburg last week that people living with HIV and AIDS are at an increased risk of developing serious mental disorders. Such disorders go beyond the depression that inflicts people when they learn they are HIV positive–a depression that requires counseling and constant effort to overcome.For Swaziland, with its incipient psychiatric services, this is a tall order. But a foundation already exists – the incorporation of counselling into HIV testing services is well established.A counsellor is not a psychiatrist, however. A psychiatrist is a trained doctor who can detected serious mental illness and prescribe remedies, sometimes medication and sometimes talk therapy.
Doctors prescribe bed rest not just to allow the body to heal, but so the patient will calm down. .
It follows that a particularly stressful illness like HIV would be a great burden to a person’s mental health. People with HIV have weakened immune systems, and are advised by all means to reduce stress in their lives. This affects the way they earn a living and how they cope with family and personal relationships. Now it is learned from a meeting of mental health professionals in Johannesburg last week that people living with HIV and AIDS are at an increased risk of developing serious mental disorders. Such disorders go beyond the depression that inflicts people when they learn they are HIV positive–a depression that requires counseling and constant effort to overcome.For Swaziland, with its incipient psychiatric services, this is a tall order. But a foundation already exists – the incorporation of counselling into HIV testing services is well established.A counsellor is not a psychiatrist, however. A psychiatrist is a trained doctor who can detected serious mental illness and prescribe remedies, sometimes medication and sometimes talk therapy.
Participants in the Johannesburg meeting cited studies from all over the world that reported how in all populations it seems that mental health disorders are growing the fastest among people infected with HIV. Studies find that people with HIV have double the incidence of mental illnesses of HIV-negative people.
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