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In San Francisco, Offer et al. (2007) elicited narratives from 26 gay and bisexual men recently infected with HIV, who described the circumstances surrounding their own seroconversion. The investigators had particular interest in exploring
participants' attributions of responsibility for HIV prevention before and after they became infected. Before becoming infected with HIV, responsibility for prevention was often attributed to HIV-negative individuals themselves. These retrospective attributions revealed themes that included feelings of negligence, a sense of consequences, followed by regret. After seroconversion, responsibility for HIV prevention was primarily attributed to HIV-positive individuals themselves. Themes within these attributions included pledges to avoid HIV transmission, a strong sense of burden related to the possibility of infecting someone, and risk reduction strategies that they implemented in an attempt to avoid HIV transmission. (p. 24)
Offer and colleagues suggest that,
[i]n addition to acknowledging the burden of responsibility that HIV-positive individuals face, programs can work with these individuals to ... identify possible approaches to managing the burden of responsibility with interventions that reduce stress and increase social support. Another suggestion is to include general stress reduction skills such as role-playing various situations that participants identify as stressful. HIV prevention messages that stress the importance of community or social levels of responsibility for HIV prevention in addition to shared responsibility among partners might also serve to support HIV-positive individuals and reduce their sense of burden for HIV prevention. Furthermore, external factors (such as lack of sexual experience, substance abuse, and daily survival) shown in these results to impede the participants' ability to enact feelings of responsibility need to be addressed in order to improve the chances of success of program participants. (p. 34)
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Summer 2007 Newsletter / Volume 8, Issue 4
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