The medico-scientific advances made in the treatment of HIV and AIDS, which emerged in the mid 1990s, were significant. The Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Treatments (HAART) or anti- HIV treatments have been positioned as resources that changed the way HIV is now medically and socially constructed. Although HIV remains incurable, it is now constructed as a chronic disease that is treatable, manageable and people are no longer positioned as living with a ‘death sentence’. The research on which this thesis is based explores the subjective lived experiences of people with HIV living in urban Australia in the context of this change. The effects that the treatments have had on corporeality have also changed the ways people are now living with HIV in the post-treatment era. It is an era in which treatments for HIV are taken-for-granted, but issues, doubts and concerns relating to treatment use are firmly embedded in the everyday life of people with HIV. The findings suggest that whilst AIDS-related mortality has decreased since the availability of effective treatments, the notion of ‘quality of life’, as subjectively constituted and defined, is an ongoing negotiation that is predicated on people locating meaningfulness in their everyday lives. Despite the decreased threat of failing health and death, the findings also suggest that people are continuing to be confronted by, and therefore positioned as, having to make sense of complex issues embedded in living with a disease for which there is no cure. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/216316 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Wong, Wai-Kwan Tim, University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Psychology |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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