Disclosure and Stigma of a Positive HIV-Serostatus: A Two-Step Cluster Analysis of the HIV Disclosure Scale.

Despite national efforts to improve the public's education about an HIV diagnosis, stigma still plays a significant role in how persons living with HIV (PLH) decide to disclose their serostatus to friends, family, or healthcare workers. Disclosure can be related to both positive and negative psychological health outcomes, including rates of depression and perceived social support. Researchers often assess disclosure patterns in PLH due to its association with important health implications; however, to date, there are no empirically validated measures of HIV-serostatus disclosure. The HIV Disclosure Scale (HDS) was created to assess various aspects of the disclosure process and has been utilized in several studies as an adequate measurement of HIV-serostatus disclosure despite no available psychometric data. This study aims to uncover constructs measured by the HDS using exploratory two-step cluster analysis to provide an initial analysis of the psychometric properties of this scale.

An exploratory study of social support, distress, and life disruption among low-income Hispanic women under treatment for early stage breast cancer.

Relationships between distress and perceived availability of social support were examined in 51 Hispanic women being treated for early stage breast cancer. Distress and different types (emotional, instrumental) and sources (spouse, women family members, other family members, friends) of support were measured at presurgery, postsurgery, and at 3-, 6-, and 12-month follow-ups. Emotional support from friends and instrumental support from spouse at presurgery predicted lower distress postsurgery. No other prospective benefits of perceived support emerged. Distress at several time points predicted erosion of subsequent support, particularly instrumental support from women in the family. In contrast to the adverse effects of distress (and independent of them), illness-related disruption of recreational and social activities at 6 months elicited greater support at 12 months.

Hypnotizability and traumatic experience: a diathesis-stress model of dissociative symptomatology.

OBJECTIVE: The authors propose a diathesis-stress model to describe how pathological dissociation may arise from an interaction between innate hypnotizability and traumatic experience. METHOD: To support the proposition that pathological dissociation may reflect autohypnotic process, the authors highlight clinical and research data indicating parallels between controlled hypnotic dissociative states and uncontrolled pathological dissociative symptoms and summarize evidence of hypnotizability in persons with psychiatric disorders that manifest these symptoms. The authors present this evidence by examining dissociative symptomatology in four psychological domains: perception, behavior and will, affect, and memory and identity. In addition, modern cognitive and neuropsychological models of dissociation are briefly reviewed. RESULTS: Several lines of evidence converge in support of the role of autohypnosis in pathological dissociation. There is considerable evidence that controlled formal hypnosis can produce a variety of dissociations of awareness and control that resemble many of the symptoms in uncontrolled pathological dissociative conditions; and it is possible to discern in dissociative pathology the features of absorption, dissociation, and suggestibility/automaticity that characterize formal hypnotic states. There is also accumulating evidence of high levels of hypnotic capacity in all groups with dissociative symptomatology that have been systematically assessed. In addition, the widespread and successful therapeutic use of hypnosis in the treatment of many dissociative symptoms and conditions (and the potential for hypnosis to induce dissociative symptomatology) also supports the assumption that hypnosis and pathological dissociation share an underlying process. CONCLUSIONS: High hypnotizability may be a diathesis for pathological dissociative states, particularly under conditions of acute traumatic stress.