Aids, Health, and Mental Health A Primary Sourcebook

AIDS, Health, and Mental Health is the first volume to fully integrate the biological, psychological, and social aspects of AIDS management and prevention under a coherent model - a model that provides a truly effective framework for resolving the extraordinarily complex problems brought about by the emergence of HIV disease. The book's explicit systems analysis of HIV infection lends itself to a highly practical application by psychotherapists and other health care providers as well as public health policymakers. No stone is left unturned as it provides readers with an important functional overview of all components of the illness, and then goes on to develop, through detailed case studies, the use of the Rochester Model of family systems therapy with both traditional and nontraditional family systems. The authors depict specific methods of engaging the patient's family, social, and community systems, and how the use of these systems can engender healing. Throughout, psychotherapeutic techniques are integrated with medical and neuropsychiatric treatment issues. Interweaving biological, socioeconomic, political, ethnic, and spiritual concerns, the volume stresses preventive training, risk reduction, and infection control, taking into account the strengths and limitations of a full range of public health measures. Health care professionals are provided with tools for self-education and self-protection as well as for patient education and protection. Of particular value to readers will be the authors' efforts to normalize the problems of HIV and a chapter on health care worker "burnout" and issues of countertransference - issues that will be an increasing dilemma for health care professionals as the epidemic spreads and applies greater stress to an already overtaxed and underfunded health care delivery system. Health care providers and mental health professionals will be richly rewarded with practical therapeutic tools, an in-depth understanding of the difficult medical management and public health decisions that must be made, as well as an ethical model for negotiating complex value decisions. They will also acquire an increased compassion for seemingly incomprehensible behaviors that, among certain populations, heighten the risk of infection. Again and again, AIDS, Health, and Mental Health demonstrates the proven value of applying an integrative systems approach to every aspect of managing - and hopefully overcoming - AIDS. It is a volume that no one involved in the care of AIDS patients - or any reader who wants a truly objective and in-depth understanding of the AIDS epidemic - should be without.