article · BMC Global and Public Health
Adolescents living with HIV in Malawi who experience depressive symptoms face a pervasive stigmatisation process. This ongoing HIV-related stigma creates substantial disruptions to healthcare engagement and causes detrimental harm to mental health during vital stages of adolescent development. To mitigate these adverse outcomes, targeted investment in stigma-reduction programmes is required alongside deeper research. Further investigations are specifically needed to map the stigmatisation process more fully and uncover resilience factors that can safeguard the mental health and medical outcomes of affected adolescents.
Adolescents living with HIV encounter unique social pressures that threaten both their psychological wellbeing and physical healthcare. Understanding how stigma operates alongside depressive symptoms highlights the critical need for targeted support systems, ensuring young people stay in treatment and avoid poor health outcomes during crucial developmental years.
The findings point towards the potential design of targeted stigma-reduction interventions and psychosocial support programmes for healthcare providers and public health organisations working with youth. As an observational study calling for further research to identify resilience factors, this work represents early-stage evidence rather than an immediately deployable product or service.
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This study systematically describes the stigmatization process faced by ALWH and experiencing depressive symptoms in Malawi. Notably, HIV stigma continues to disrupt HIV care and detrimentally impacts mental health during adolescent development. Further studies focused specifically on stigma are needed to better characterize this process and identify additional resilience factors. Investment in stigma-reduction interventions for ALWH is needed to avert poor mental health and HIV outcomes.
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DOI: 10.1186/s44263-024-00072-3
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