African American men living with HIV/AIDS in Detroit, Michigan: The impact of age, secrecy, health, and support resources on psychological distress.

Abstract

In the coming millieum, African American men are expected to constitute the largest segment of society living with HIV/AIDS. There is little research on this population, their use of support resources and the effect of support resources on mental health outcomes. To address this gap, 120 African American men living with HIV/AIDS in Detroit, Michigan were located using convenience and snowball sampling. The main hypotheses were that (1) health (number of symptoms), secrecy about HIV status, and age affect psychological distress (depression); (2) support resources (number of family members who know HIV status, number of friends who know HIV status, number of social services used/received, attendance of social/political groups, participation in organized and/or non-organized religious activities impact psychological distress and the relationship between health, secrecy, and psychological distress. Multivariate analysis (with controls for social class and employment) were run, where support resources were regressed on secrecy, health, and age. The analysis showed that secrecy of HIV status was significantly and negatively associated with number of friends who knew HIV status; health was significant and related to social services received/used, and; age was significant and positively related to number of social services received/used and participation in organized religious activities. Multivariate regressions on psychological distress showed that belonging to the upper/middle class, number of friends who know HIV status, number of family members who know HIV, and number of social services used/received each had a significant and inverse relationship with psychological distress. Age and secrecy were not significant. Health was significantly and positively related to psychological distress. It also had the strongest effect on psychological distress. Using Wheaton's methodology (1985) for identifying mediator variables, it was determined that the number of social services used/received was a suppressor variable for the relationship between number of symptoms and psychological distress. Health, secrecy, and age influence the type of support resources used by African American men living with HIV/AIDS. For this study, having close family members and friends who know HIV status and use of social services were important and significant for decreasing psychological distress.Ph.D.Clinical psychologyHealth and Environmental SciencesMental healthPsychologyPublic healthPublic policySocial SciencesSocial workUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/132251/2/9959866.pd