Mental illness and HIV

NCHSR is partially funded by the Australian Department of Health and Ageing. © 2010 National Centre in HIV Social Research, The University of New South Wales Photographs on pages 1, 3 and 4 copyright iStockphoto What we see depends mainly on what we look for, or so John Lubbock (1834– 1913), a noted anthropologist, once said. In the field of HIV research and care what we don’t look for, we miss. In this case what we don’t see, or continue to ignore even with available evidence, is the risk that people living with a mental illness (PLWMI) have to acquire HIV. There is little doubt that people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) have higher rates of mental illness than the general population (Weiser, Wolfe & Bangsberg, 2004) but similar or even lesser rates to other groups with chronic illnesses such as diabetes (Moliffe, 2010), fibromyalgia (Rehm et al., 2010) and ulcerative colitis (Rubin et al., 2010). Though not so well researched in Australia but confirmed in US studies, is the high incidence of HIV risk behaviours in PLWMI (mainly depression/anxiety and psychotic disorders) in many sub-populations (Dausey & Desai, 2003).