ABSTRACT
Sexual risk behavior and illicit drug use among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) contribute to poor health and onward transmission of HIV. The aim of this collaborative multi-site nursing research study was to explore the association between self-compassion and risk behaviors in PLWHA. As part of a larger project, nurse researchers in Canada, China, Namibia, Puerto Rico, Thailand and the US enrolled 1211 sexually active PLWHA using convenience sampling. The majority of the sample was male, middle-aged, and from the US. Illicit drug use was strongly associated with sexual risk behavior, but participants with higher self-compassion were less likely to report sexual risk behavior, even in the presence of illicit drug use. Self-compassion may be a novel area for behavioral intervention development for PLWHA.
Subject(s)
Empathy , HIV Infections/psychology , Risk-Taking , Adult , Cross-Sectional Studies , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Psychological Tests , Self Concept , Self Report , Substance-Related Disorders/epidemiology , Substance-Related Disorders/psychology , Unsafe Sex/psychology , Unsafe Sex/statistics & numerical dataABSTRACT
Middle and long distance athletics races behave as power-laws when time (or average speed) and distance are related, thus suggesting the presence of critical phenomena. Power-laws as a function of the athlete's position in the all-time world ranking allows us to define a Performance Index that reveals the existence of possible multifractal structures associated to the natural barriers to that the athletes tend in their evolution towards better results and in pursuit of world records. The new theories of self-organized critical phenomena provide an explanation for the power-law and fractal structures in systems at, or near, their critical points. In this paper we analyse the athletic races using these theories and as a result of this study a new variety of interpretations are posited.
