AIDS & Group Therapy

In the current literature, there have been a number of articles on group therapy with individuals who have contracted the HIV virus. For example, Gambe and Getzel (1989) have noted that the contraction of AIDS produces a crisis wherein existential questions and issues become dominant. In their work with gay men who have AIDS, the authors noted that therapy is maximally effective when it: (1) addresses itself to existential issues; (2) operates to provide peer support; (3) focuses on the development of more effective problem-solving and coping skills; and (4) responds to the emotional and health crises that AIDS patients experience as a result of the progressively debilitating nature of the disease.

Shernoff (1990) has examined therapeutic processes for HIV-infected drug users, gay men, and bisexual men. He notes that listening and encouraging clients to discuss their pain has been associated with the remediation of both the isolation and the sense of shame patients often experience upon discovering that they have contracted AIDS.

Shernoff, unlike some therapists who feel that an acceptance of the inevitability of progressive disease followed by death is an important element of therapy, feels that hope must be encouraged in AIDS clients. He also points out that therapeutic efforts are not fully meeting the needs of clients or the community if clients with AIDS are not instructed in such practices as using condoms and cleaning needle

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chaffner (1986). One of the points made by Schaffner is that treatment does not just include the medications and medical procedures given to patients. Rather it also includes the administration of these procedures by physicians. Therefore part of treatment is the way patients are treated by their physicians. In this regard, Schaffner (1986) has noted that: Treating AIDS patients puts physicians under severe stress, evoking fears of contracting the disease themselves, precipitating feels of professional failure, reducing therapeutic optimism, and creating an insupportable workload. (p.67) It seems reasonable to suggest that since AIDS patients are interacting with physicians who may be treating them in a manner that is either stress- or fear-based, these issues need to be also addressed in group therapy. Schaffner has found it effective to sometimes include physicians in the patient's AIDS support groups, thereby getting issues out in the open and as a result reducing stress. Barrows and Halgin (1988) have noted that psychotherapy groups in work with gay men will differ in terms of the level of illness experienced by clients. For example, they note that psychotherapy with asymptomatic gay men tend to converge on the follow

Category: Psychology - A