Anxiety about HIV criminalisation among people living with HIV in Australia

ABSTRACT

Many countries, including Australia, have laws that enable criminal prosecution of an individual based on reckless or intentional transmission of HIV to another person. Previous research has suggested that criminalisation of HIV may serve to hamper public health efforts by inhibiting HIV status disclosure or testing. Limited research to date has sought to examine the broader impact of criminalisation on the health and wellbeing of people living with HIV, which this paper aims to address. Drawing on cross-sectional data from 895 people living with HIV in Australia, this paper describes associations between standard measures of mental health and resilience with a newly devised scale measuring anxiety about HIV criminalisation. Findings suggest that laws criminalising HIV transmission have a broadly negative impact on wellbeing of people living with HIV, a situation that is exacerbated for gay and bisexual men, and other people living with HIV who may face intersecting forms of marginalisation based on race, gender or class. There is little justification for these laws being applied in Australia and the findings add weight to advocacy seeking to overturn criminalisation across the world.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV criminalisation
• people living with HIV
• Australia
• mental health

Acknowledgements

This study would not be possible without our community partners, including (but not limited to): Living Positive Victoria, Positive Life NSW, Queensland Positive People, Positive Women Victoria, PozHet, Straight Arrows, Western Australian AIDS Council, AIDS Action Council (now Meridian), ACON, Thorne Harbour Health, Northern Territory AIDS and Hepatitis Council, Tasmanian Council on AIDS, Hepatitis and Related Diseases. HIV Futures relies on the time and commitment of people living with HIV; we are grateful for this support and value the leadership of people living with HIV in sustaining this project for more than 20 years. We also wish to acknowledge the contributions of Jayne Lucke, Gary Dowsett and Rachel Thorpe who contributed to the HIV Futures 8 study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Data for this paper were drawn from HIV Futures, a periodic survey of health and wellbeing of people living with HIV funded entirely by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Health.