August 21, 2008

Short-term Therapy May Help HIV-Related Depression

A short 20-week course of psychotherapy may improve depression and anxiety symptoms for gay men living with HIV, according to a study published in the July issue of AIDS Patient Care and STDs.

Depression and anxiety are more common in people living with HIV than the general public, and gay men who are HIV-positive may doubly experience discrimination and stigma—both contributors to depression and anxiety. While short-term psychotherapy has been proven effective as a treatment for HIV-negative people with depression and anxiety, its usefulness in HIV-positive people, notably gay men living with the virus, hasn’t been determined.   

To explore the potential benefits, Tracy Pobuda, PsyD, of the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology-Stanford Consortium, in Palo Alto, California, and her colleagues examined the records of gay men living with HIV who had sought psychological help at the AIDS Health Project, a community mental health clinic in San Francisco. To be included in the analysis, the men had to complete a detailed mental health questionnaire before starting therapy and again after 20 weeks of therapy. The majority of the 79 study participants who met the study criteria were white, and the average age was 42.

Though the study was not designed with a control group, study participants reported a 23 percent reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety after 20 weeks of therapy. This difference, however, did not reach statistical significance, meaning that it was small enough to have occurred by chance. The authors, however, assert that the trend toward improvement was strong enough to warrant a larger study of short-term therapy compared with other well-established treatments.

Search: AIDS Health Project, Tracy Pobuda, Pacific Graduate School, depression, anxiety, psychotherapy

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