How does stigma complicate HIV/AIDS care?

Stigma has burdened people living with HIV/AIDS since the very beginning of the epidemic, and in many ways, we have not adequately addressed it. Socially stigmatized HIV/AIDS continues to fuel the disease in the United States and worldwide. It keeps people from getting tested, it prevents people from disclosing their status, it keeps people out of care, it makes treatment more difficult, and for far too many people living with HIV, it adds undue stress to their daily lives.

In this video, Diane Jones discusses how stigma continues unabated in many ways today -- and how that is apparent when people are first diagnosed with HIV. Despite the advent of highly effective, lifesaving antiretroviral therapy and other advances, people today face many of the same psychological burdens as people diagnosed years ago, Jones said.

Diane Jones, RN is a nurse at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH)