HIV and AIDS Research 

According to Herek and Glunt (1988), HIV/AIDS is a disease epidemic, but also an epidemic of stigma. In the UK, the number of new HIV has been rising each year since the 1990’s. Since the year 2000, there have been more than 3000 new diagnosis of HIV each year, with 6932 people diagnosed in 2003 alone. This is more than double the rate of diagnosis of new infections in 1999 (Aventa, 2005). As the incidence of HIV detection in the population increases, there is also a need to address the social stigma associated with the disease, and its implications for health care access, and well-being, amongst HIV positive individuals. This paper will examine how social stigma affects the lives of individuals with HIV/AIDS and how it influences disclosure within the community and access to health care services. A definition of the problem has been provided by Herek and Mitnick (1996):HIV and AIDS Research Paper

AIDS-related stigma (or put more simply, AIDS stigma) refers to prejudice, discounting, discrediting and discrimination directed at people perceived to have AIDS or HIV and at individuals, groups and communities with which they are associated. It persists despite passage of protective legislation and disclosures by public figures that they have AIDS or are infected with HIV (p 1)

While Goffman (1963) has identified stigma as a common component in many chronic illnesses, it represents an integral part of the HIV/AIDS individual’s experience of seeking diagnosis, living with the condition, reporting their condition to others and seeking appropriate health and social care. Being rejected and fearing social rejection have been identified through the research literature as main sources of stress for HIV/AIDS sufferers (Berger, Ferrans and Lashley, 2001). Lee et al (2002) have argued that there are four layers to the stigmatisation of HIV/ AIDS. Firstly, it is a disease associated with blame and self-inflicted behavioural patterns because the primary mode of transmission is sexual behaviour and drug taking. Indeed, public understanding of HIV/AIDS, and sympathy with its victims, is delineated by the source of the infection. There are ‘innocent’ victims that have contracted the disease through blood transfusion, or haemophilia or perinatal transmission, and there are ‘guilty’ sufferers who have contracted the disease as a consequence of sexual behaviour or drug use (Novick, 1997). As Novick (1997) has argued, there is a unique association between HIV/AIDS and already discriminated subgroups; Somehow, the virus could identify and infect certain people with truncated civil rights – gay and bisexual men, injection drug users, African-Americans, Haitans, Hispanics and sex workers. All of these people have been, by tradition and by law, isolated, ostacised or constrained from occupying full citizenship and social equality (p 53). Novick (1997) uses the term multiple stigmata to describe the experience that most AIDS/ HIV sufferers encounter in society. This refers to the fact that HIV/AIDS may not be the only source of stigmatisation and discrimination in a person’s life and it can be piled up five or six deep (p 59) for being a woman, black, on welfare, HIV infected, and an addicted mother. Or, for being a sex worker, HIV infected and a substance abuser (p 59). He argues that the long-term stigmatisation of HIV/AIDS can be linked to social ostracisation, denounciation and criminalisation of the behaviour of minority groups. This is highlighted in the treatment of people that have contracted HIV through sexual behaviour. As Lee et al (2002) argue, transmission of the disease through heterosexual practices between men and women is more socially acceptable than homosexual or bisexual practices.