HIV: When people hear HIV, more than likely they think of a gay male. It is thought that Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) comes from having gay sex or it is passed on from someone that has had gay sex with another person. People can only be infected by HIV from the blood of a person that has HIV rather that’s through sexual intercourse, drug activities, or other things. Peate (2013) found that as people are living with HIV into old age they will need increasing social and clinical support from health-care providers, including community nurses. With complex health problems, scarcer financial resources and greater isolation than many of their peers, older people living with HIV face major challenges (Peate, 2013; Power et al, 2010). Having HIV is a …show more content…
It is a vicious disease that can kill people and there is no cure for it. People that have HIV can sometimes start to have a negative outlook on life because they realize that there is no way to cure HIV and they will have to live with it for the rest of their lives. HIV stigma has the potential to damage and destroy a person’s sense of self-worth and identity (Peate, 2013). Health care professionals must pay attention to patients with HIV stigma because they are more likely to not care as much about their health and can begin to give up on trying to better themselves. People living with HIV often internalize stigma in feelings of shame, guilt, anger, fear and self-loathing and many of them can experience social avoidance, the real or apparent loss of friends and feeling that people are uncomfortable being around them as a result of their HIV disease (Peate, 2013; Emlet, 2006). HIV is such an intense disease that people can get really protective about it because they do not want to get it. Even though HIV is not contagious airborne or just being around a person, some people act as if it is and do not want to chance even being around a HIV infected person. That can hurt the feelings of a person that is infected