SUMMARY Stigma toward people living with HIV is pervasive in China and related to poor service utilization, psychosocial distress, and diminished quality of life. In an effort to identify mechanisms to reduce HIV stigma and its negative consequences, we examined whether social support mediates the relation between enacted stigma and both depressive symptoms and quality of life among 120 HIV outpatients in Beijing, China. Generally, perceived social support was associated with less stigma, less depressive symptomatology, and better quality of life. Using multivariable regression models, we found that social support was a full mediator of the impact of stigma on both depressive symptomatology and quality of life. The findings suggest social support may be an important target of interventions to reduce the impact of stigma on poor psychosocial health outcomes.

ObjectivesThe aim of the study was to investigate the psychological status and the psychosocial experiences of HIV-positive people using Symptom Check List 90 (SCL-90) in eastern China. MethodsTwo hundred and fourteen HIV-positive people and 200 controls were recruited to the study. Participants were given an anonymous questionnaire which included questions pertaining to demography, SCL-90 and psychosocial experiences. ResultsThe mean subscale scores for SCL-90 in the HIV-positive group were all higher than those of the control group (Po0.001), especially for depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and hostility. Female HIV-positive individuals had significantly higher depression and anxiety scores (Po0.05) and more scores higher than 2.0 than male HIV-positive individuals. The average number of subscales with mean scores higher than 2.0 was 4.1 for female HIV-positive individuals and 3.7 for male HIV-positive individuals. The most common psychosocial experiences related to HIV infection were fear (36.9%) and helplessness (31.8%). 90.2% of HIV-positive people would not tell others about their disease because of fear of discrimination against family members (42.2%), exclusion by community members (26.9%) and abandonment (23.3%). Discrimination from acquaintances (38.8%) was a main stressor in the HIVpositive individuals' daily life. Most members of HIV-positive individuals' communities expressed negative attitudes: alienation, coldness, aversion and fear. 38.3% of the HIV-positive participants reported that their family members had been discriminated against. ConclusionsThe results demonstrate that HIV-positive people in eastern China live in a negative psychosocial environment and suffer from psychological distress. It is necessary to provide psychological interventions for people living with AIDS and to educate community members in order to improve the psychosocial environment.

Effective health care models to scale up combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) are needed in rural southwestern China. We aimed to evaluate the ART treatment outcomes and their associations with patients' demographic characteristics and pre-treatment clinical features in a scaled-up provincial ART program serving eight heavily HIV-affected prefectures in Yunnan Province. We abstracted information from a computerized database for adults initiating ART between July 2007 and September 2008. Survival functions of mortality and treatment failure were calculated by age group, gender, transmission mode, and baseline CD4 count. Multivariable Cox regression analyses were conducted to find independent associations of various demographic and baseline clinical features with outcome variables. Of the 1967 patients in the mortality analysis, there were 110 deaths, of which 16 were coded as accidents or suicides. Adjusted hazard ratios (AHR) associated with mortality were greater for patients with baseline CD4 counts <100 cells/µl vs. patients with CD4 counts ≥200 cells/µl, for male vs. female, for single vs. married, and for those acquired HIV through injection drug use (IDU) vs. other modes of transmission. Successful treatment was 81.3% at six months after treatment started. Immunologic treatment failure was associated with baseline CD4 counts but not with demographic characteristics. Overall loss to follow-up rate was 2.1%. Collaboration between clinics and community networks are distinctive features of Yunnan's model for scaling up ART across a diverse, poor, and rural population. This study finds that the strategy can succeed even if 40% of the patients have a history of IDU.