Psychological variables and maternal HIV status disclosure to young uninfected children

Abstract

Mothers living with HIV are faced with the dilemma of when and how to disclose their HIV-positive status to their young uninfected children. In this study, baseline data from the Kgolo Mmogo project was used to understand this dilemma using a South African sample in the city of Tshwane. The researcher aimed to compare mothers who disclosed their HIV status to their young children with mothers who did not disclose in terms of self-reported psychological variables (depression symptoms, coping style and parenting stress) using a Mann-Whitney U test. In addition, the research also investigated which maternal socio-demographic variables (mother’s age, employment status, marital status and level of education) are significantly associated with maternal HIV status disclosure using a Chi-square test of independence. This research consisted of 97 mothers grouped according to their disclosure status (n = 47 mothers that disclosed and a randomly selected sub-sample n = 50 of the 356 non-disclosing mothers). The following instruments were used: the Centre for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale, the Brief COPE scale, the Parenting Stress Index Short Form and the Kgolo Mmogo questionnaire. In the findings, the marital status of mothers was significantly associated with HIV status disclosure. Single mothers disclosed significantly more than mothers who were married or had partners. The age, educational level and employment status of the mothers were not significantly associated with maternal HIV disclosure status. Furthermore, the results revealed that mothers in both groups (disclosing and non-disclosing) reported high levels of depressive symptoms and parenting stress. The groups did not differ significantly with regards to these variables. Similarly, while overall coping style was not significantly different between the two groups of mothers, the disclosing mothers were significantly more likely to use support seeking and behavioural disengagement as a coping style, while non-disclosing mother were more likely to engage in self-blame as a coping strategy. This study provides evidence that psychosocial support services should become an integral part of HIV and AIDS routine care as this may improve coping and reduce psychological distress and lead to higher rates of disclosure. This is important because maternal disclosure has documented benefits for both mother and child.