Analysis On The Mental Health Status Of AIES VCT Clients

BackgroundPsychological problems interact with HIV/AIDS. The former can result in high-risk behavior. Virus and opportunistic infection can damage the central nervous system. Infection of HIV, side effects of ART, social discrimination and insult can lead to psychological problems. Therefore, providing psychological intervention for PLWHA is one of important measures of preventing high-risk behavior and the spread of HIV.VCT clinic not only is an efficient way to find high-risk groups for HIV and PLWHA, also is an important place for clients to get psychological intervention. Only fully understand the psychological condition of VCT clients can we formulate the corresponding policy and provide targeted psychological intervention services.ObjectiveTo understand the mental health status and explore the factors affecting mental health of clients visiting AIDS VCT clinic, and provide the scientific basis to improve the mental health and reduce the risk of HIV infection and transmission of clients.MethodsAll clients visiting VCT clinic from Sep.2012to Jun.2013were surveyed with symptom checklist-90(SCL-90), EPQ, Social Support Questionnaire(SSQ). And the questionnaire were obtained in an anonymous way. Software SPSS19.0was used for variance analysis,t Test, Dunnett-t Test, correlation analysis and Logistic multiple regression analysis, et al. ResultsThe prevalence of mental symptoms is45.34%and obsessive-compulsive, depression and anxiety are the three highest symptoms,31.1%of the clients have two or more symptoms at the same time. The VCT clients with mental symptoms recently have more symptoms than PLWHA, high-risk groups for HIV, patients of physical diseases and neurosis. This research uses total score and9factor score as positive standard of mental symptoms, positive SCL-90total score and positive factor score are used as dependent variable to analyse the influencing factors of mental health. Logistic regression analysis of positive SCL-90total score shows the factors influencing the psychological health of the clients of VCT clinic are:neuroticism(N)(OR=1.10,95%CI:1.06～1.13) and objective support(OR=0.86,95%CI:0.76～0.98). Accuracy rate of the prediction of the modal is72.7%, and there is no any HIV/AIDS related factors affecting mental health of VCT clients.Logistic regressions of positive factor score of SCL-90shows that Neuroticism(N) is the common influencing factor except Hostility. Other influencing factors include psychoticism, introversion-extroversion and objective support. The accuracy rates of the prediction of the modals vary from70.2%-93.8%.ConclusionThe mental health level of VCT clients is lower than that of national norm. Various degrees of mental problems exist among VCT clients, and the top three symptoms are obsessive-compulsive, anxiety and depression.Bad emotion is quite obvious among the VCT clients with mental symptoms, and they have more symptoms than PLWHA, high-risk groups for HIV, patients of physical diseases and neurosis. Facing the possibility of infecting HIV, people with the personality tendency of neuroticism are more likely to develop psychological problems. Social support is helpful to decrease psychological symptoms, so the consciousness of mental problems and mental intervention should be enhanced at VCT clinic, and good psychological referral service is also necessary in order to provide professional counseling and therapy for those clients with serious mental symptoms.