Author(s)

Jayakumar Palanisamy, Karthikeyan Murugesan, Senthilkumar Subramanian, Uma Devi, Pitchai Chinnapidaran, Rajamahendravarman Vellandi, Inigo Beula

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BACKGROUND: Mortality of HIV/AIDS patients comes down in India after the National Aids Control Organization started providing free Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) since 2004. Madurai ART Center started providing free ART since 2004. Psychosocial profile of this population explored in this study. METHODS: A cross sectional interview conducted during the year 2008 with semi structured questionnaire on HIV positive clients who are on Highly Active Anti-Retro- viral Therapy (HAART) for more than 6 months. Convenience sampling done and totally 433 clients were interviewed with informed consent. RESULTS: Three fourth (73.4%) of the clients know about ART centre through Government Hospitals or Primary Health Centre. Most of the Clients (98.6%) on ART are feels back to normal life or back to near normal life. Pill burden/ Pill fatigue perceived by clients is 4.8%.Discrimination perceived was 8.8% and mostly in their own house or by neighbors, but most of their children (99.2%) were not discriminated as per the clients. Spouse positive rate for the married clients was 61.5% and unmarried in this population was 4.6%. Major or minor psychological problems in this group were 39.7% and attempted suicide was 8.8%. Drug abuse (alcohol and smoking) while started on ART was 40.4% and the current abusers are 7.6%. CONCLUSION: This study supports effectiveness of free ART program and effective case referral from government institutions. High percentage of major or minor psychological problem warrants further exploratory study and may need psychological interventions in this population.

HIV, AIDS, Antiretroviral Therapy, Psychosocial

J. Palanisamy, K. Murugesan, S. Subramanian, U. Devi, P. Chinnapidaran, R. Vellandi and I. Beula, "Psychosocial Profile of HIV Patients on HAART in Southern India," World Journal of AIDS, Vol. 1 No. 4, 2011, pp. 192-197. doi: 10.4236/wja.2011.14028.