Subjective memory complaints of Chinese HIV-infected patients in Hong Kong: Relationships with social support, depressive mood and medical symptoms

Abstract

The present study aimed at investigating the contribution of social support, depressive mood, medical symptoms and objective memory performance to the subjective memory complaints of Chinese HIV-infected persons in Hong Kong. Ninety HIV-infected persons were administered the Hong Kong List Learning Test (HKLLT) as an objective measure of memory. They also reported their subjective memory complaints, HIV-related medical symptoms, depressive mood and perceived social support by self-administered questionnaires. Path analyses were conducted to evaluate models that depicted the relationships among the variables. The final model that showed the best fit to the data suggested that objective memory performance had no significant role to play in patients’ subjective memory complaints. Depressive mood was found to be a significant factor that directly affected patient's subjective memory complaints and social support played an indirect role with depressive mood as a mediating variable. These findings suggest that memory complaints might be an indicator of mood disturbance and social support might be useful in ameliorating depressive mood and these complaints. The need of assessment of other cognitive functions in future research is also discussed.

Acknowledgements

The study was supported by Grant MSS116R of the AIDS Trust Fund. The authors would like to express gratitude to Ms. Christine Hui, Ms. Cathy Leung and Mr. Thomas Yeung for their assistance in data collection and data processing.