You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The Psychiatry of AIDS: Why now? Who is the audience for such a Guide to Diagnosis and Treatment? What is the new/current body of knowledge that the authors wish to communicate? These were the questions that guided my reading of this book.
AIDS has been around for almost three decades. Clearly, it became one of the worst pandemics that afflicted mankind. The impact of AIDS devastated entire communities, changed norms and behaviors, and brought down social taboos. It exploded as the “Gay Plague” and, at least in western societies, has been mainstreamed as another serious, chronic and globally catastrophic illness. Furthermore, scientific and clinical gains, accumulated over time, have turned around the way we view AIDS: the interventions conceptualized for AIDS prevention, screening, early intervention, treatment and disease progression of people with AIDS, have been used as models to fight other health crises. At the outset, AIDS was experienced as a fulminating, stigmatizing and isolating infection. The psychiatry of AIDS at that time was around death and dying. Once the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was identified, control of the spread of transmission and spread of the virus became the priority, along with changes in behavior and risk reduction. Then AZT, Protease Inhibitors were developed, leading to HAART, changing the course of the infection, providing us with some realistic hope. Issues of compliance and/ or adherence gained more serious meaning in the psychiatry of AIDS. Quality of life and the shortened life expectancy remain constants in the fight against AIDS.
The Psychiatry of AIDS has evolved side-by-side with the changing face of AIDS and the AIDS experience. This Book, as a recent Guide, is very valuable in the appreciation of the current thinking and experience of AIDS. When I first picked up the book, I was looking forward to a very concise, clear and a useful guideline for HIV/AIDS care. The first chapter asks the question: Why AIDS psychiatry?