Characteristics of mental health interventions in a cohort of Italian PLWH over the last five years: impact of HIV disease and outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Evidence accumulated during past years confirm that people living with HIV (PLWH) still have to deal with comorbidities and chronic complications that can increase physical and psychological issues and can affect daily functioning, quality of life and mental health. Moreover, during the COVID-19 pandemic PLWH proved to be a population at increased risk of psychological distress. We explored the ongoing issues and the characteristics of the mental health interventions for which a cohort of Italian PLWH interacted with a psychologist over the past five years. We analysed a dataset that included 61 PLWH who underwent a psychological intervention between 2018 and 2022. We compared different frequencies in characteristics of mental health interventions according to different demographic and clinical variables, psychopathological symptoms and time of the request for intervention. We showed that psychopathological symptoms most frequently reported by patients were anxiety (55.7%), and depression (49.2%). Furthermore, we reported that most our patients undertook occasional psychological support meetings (31%), sought an intervention after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (62.3%) and complained about disclosure issues (48.5%). Disclosure issues were mainly reported by younger PLWH (p = 0.002) with a shorter disease (p = 0.031) and treatment history (p = 0.032), and higher interpersonal sensitivity (p = 0.042). It seems fundamental to integrate psychological interventions into the care of PLWH, to give particular attention to PLWH with risky demographic, clinical and mental health factors and to pay special attention to emergency conditions (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) and the most widespread issues to create ad hoc interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV
• PLWH
• Mental health
• Psychological interventions
• Disclosure

Disclosure statement

AB received fee for advisory board by ViiV Healthcare, personal fee by Janssen Cilag (JC). SDG received speakers' honoraria and support for travel to meetings from Gilead, Janssen Cilag (JC), Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) and Viiv Healthcare. AC received travel grants and congress' fee from ViiV Healthcare.

Ethics approval

Approval was obtained from the ethics committee of Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Rome, Italy. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [VDD], upon reasonable request.

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by VDD and VM. The first draft of the manuscript was written by VDD and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

No funds, grants, or other support was received.