The search for health care: lowering the vulnerability for illness among HIV carriers

Abstract

This study’s objective was to characterize the social representations of clients with HIV with respect to AIDS and to identify the relationships existing between these representations and the way they face becoming sick. The study used qualitative methodology, and as a theoretical reference, the theory of social representation. The study environment was the DST/AIDS Specialty Clinic located in the city of São Paulo. For data collection, a semi-structured interview process was used, and in the analysis an attempt was made to identify the significant statements in the conversations of each taking part in the study. The results of the study show that AIDS continues arousing representations in the world of those being researched as a situation that causes disarrays in daily life to the extent that it permits the emergence of feelings such as: prejudice, discrimination, exclusion, creating the fear of loneliness in the daily life of these people experiencing the situation of being seropositive. The virus carriers bring a new representation to (re)meaning of the virus in which its presence does not now evoke death. This new (re)meaning, offers them the possibility of taking care of themselves and of maintaining themselves invisible as carriers of HIV.