Correlates of psychiatric distress among wives of hemophilic men with and without HIV infection.

OBJECTIVE

The authors' objectives were 1) to examine symptoms of depression, anxiety, and anger-hostility among the wives of men with hemophilia, a major risk group for AIDS, and 2) to identify psychosocial characteristics of the women and/or their husbands that were associated with elevated distress in the women.

METHOD: Thirty-six women married to men with hemophilia were studied; the husbands of 17 of these women were HIV-seropositive. The men were drawn from the population of adults with hemophilia residing in a 24-county region of western Pennsylvania. Measures of wives' psychiatric symptoms were obtained, as were measures in three psychosocial domains: predispositional sociodemographic characteristics, psychosocial stressors, and husbands' strategies for coping.

RESULTS

The psychiatric symptoms of the women did not differ as a function of their husbands' serostatus or across subgroups defined according to stages of HIV infection or clinical severity of hemophilia. Instead, other factors--perceptions of personal risk of AIDS, husbands' use of particular coping styles with respect to HIV infection, and the experience of other life events--were the principal correlates of psychiatric distress.

CONCLUSIONS

HIV infection acted primarily as an indirect source of stress for these women, mediated by other psychosocial characteristics of both the women and their HIV-seropositive husbands. Mental health interventions for caregivers of HIV-seropositive individuals should target the identified psychosocial correlates of psychiatric distress.