The Impact of Serostatus Identity and Sexual Disclosure on the Experience of Stigma among HIV-Positive Gay Men.

Abstract

Since the beginning of the HIV and AIDS epidemic people living with HIV (PLHIV) have been living with stigma. This stigma has been shown to have severe negative effects on PLHIV’s physical and psychological health and is a key factor in the spread of HIV. The present study addresses the question of what influences the experience of stigma in HIV-positive gay men, specifically focusing on the relationship between stigma and the extent to which HIV is seen as part of one’s identity (status identity) and disclosure to regular and casual sexual partners (sexual disclosure). An online survey was conducted that recruited 214 HIV-positive gay men aged 19–67 years old (M = 37.9) living in Australia. Significant zero-order correlations with experienced stigma were found for status identity (r = .23, p < .01), and sexual disclosure (r = .16, p < .05). Associations remained when controlling for potential cofounders. A multivariate regression analysis showed significant independent associations between experienced stigma and status identity as well as between experienced stigma and sexual disclosure. Mediation analyses showed that the association between experienced stigma and status identity was not mediated by sexual disclosure in contrast to expectations. The findings suggest that seeing HIV-positivity as an important part of one’s identity is associated with more experienced stigma, however the direction of this association remains unclear. Also, status identity seems to be a more important factor associated with experienced stigma than sexual disclosure.