Am J Psychiatry 1991; 148:1016-1022
Copyright © 1991 by American Psychiatric Association
Correlates of psychiatric distress among wives of hemophilic men with and without HIV infection
MA Dew, MV Ragni and P Nimorwicz
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, PA 15213.
OBJECTIVE: The authors' objectives were 1) to examine symptoms of
depression, anxiety, and anger-hostility among the wives of men with
hemophilia, a major risk group for AIDS, and 2) to identify psychosocial
characteristics of the women and/or their husbands that were associated
with elevated distress in the women. METHOD: Thirty-six women married to
men with hemophilia were studied; the husbands of 17 of these women were
HIV-seropositive. The men were drawn from the population of adults with
hemophilia residing in a 24-county region of western Pennsylvania. Measures
of wives' psychiatric symptoms were obtained, as were measures in three
psychosocial domains: predispositional sociodemographic characteristics,
psychosocial stressors, and husbands' strategies for coping. RESULTS: The
psychiatric symptoms of the women did not differ as a function of their
husbands' serostatus or across subgroups defined according to stages of HIV
infection or clinical severity of hemophilia. Instead, other
factors--perceptions of personal risk of AIDS, husbands' use of particular
coping styles with respect to HIV infection, and the experience of other
life events--were the principal correlates of psychiatric distress.
CONCLUSIONS: HIV infection acted primarily as an indirect source of stress
for these women, mediated by other psychosocial characteristics of both the
women and their HIV- seropositive husbands. Mental health interventions for
caregivers of HIV-seropositive individuals should target the identified
psychosocial correlates of psychiatric distress.
