Includes bibliographical references. / The study aimed to provide an understanding of health-related quality of life and psychological well-being amongst low-income women living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in South Africa. The research examined the relationships among biomedical and psychosocial factors and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and the levels of suicidality (psychological distress) of women with HIV and AIDS in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. One hundred and thirty three (133) women over the age of 18 years (average age 32.96 yrs) participated in the study. In order to assess psychological distress, participants completed a Suicidality Measure (SM). Psychosocial factors were accessed through participants’ perceived social support as measured by the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MPSS). Information on social/contextual variables including income, marital status, employment status, number of children and number of family members in the household was obtained. Participants completed the Health Related Quality of Life Survey (HRQOL) – SF-36. The two biomedical measures were CD-4 count and time since diagnosis information. The findings revealed that perceived social support was inversely related to suicidality, and there was a significant correlation between perceived social support and two SF-36 domains: vitality (VT) and mental health (MH). Overall, the findings indicated that the women did not have adequate social support in their lives. Certain social/contextual factors, for example low income; being employed; number of family members in the household and having a greater number of children negatively impacted on aspects of health-related quality of life of the women. CD-4 count was not a significant predictor of health-related quality of life and suicidality (psychological distress). The findings further indicated a compromised level of HRQOL (i.e. physical, social and emotional functioning) in the HIV-infected women in the study. After controlling for biomedical factors, all the psychosocial factors did not explain the majority of the variance in quality of life. This suggests that these may not have been the most suitable variables used to explain health-related quality of life. Similarly, the psychosocial variables did not account for the variance in suicide scale once the effect of the biomedical variables had been taken into account. Although the women seldom thought of suicide, there was a significant negative relationship between time since diagnosis and suicidality. Newly diagnosed patients were less likely to think of suicide as an option than women who had been diagnosed some time before.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uct/oai:localhost:11427/9400 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Nair, Krishna Mannadiar |
| Contributors | Gwyther, Liz |
| Publisher | University of Cape Town, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Public Health and Family Medicine |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Master Thesis, Masters, Mphil Pall Med |
| Format | application/pdf |
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