Status disclosure and the acceptance of women living with HIV.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed at identifying the acceptance of women living with HIV in relation to status disclosure.

METHOD: This cross sectional study involved 235 women with HIV positive in Public Health Centre in Jakarta, Indonesia, who were chosen with a consecutive sampling. We used a modified Acceptance of Disease and Impairments Questionnaire (ADIQ) as the instrument.

RESULTS: The median score of acceptance was 3 (SD 0.72) in the range of 2.79 to 2.98 at 95% confidence interval. More than half of the respondent (65%) are housewives and 50% of them got infected from their spouses. It was also found that status disclosure was associated with the women acceptance towards HIV (p < 0.05) CONCLUSIONS: The acceptance of HIV-positive women is influenced by status disclosure which can be positive or negative. This study suggests nurses to consider the grief response of the women with HIV positive to facilitate their acceptance and better adaptation to the illness.