Aim: This paper reports a study with people living with HIV to examine the experience of depressive symptoms, self-care symptom management strategies, symptom outcomes in response to those strategies, and sources from which the strategies were learned.
Background: Depressive symptoms are common, under-diagnosed and under-treated in people living with HIV. These symptoms have been associated with lower medication adherence, risky behaviours and poorer health outcomes.
Methods: The study was based on the model of symptom management developed by the University of California San Francisco School of Nursing Symptom Management Faculty. Thirty-four HIV+ men and women from a larger study of symptom self-care strategies (n = 422) reported experiencing depressive symptoms. Data were collected from this subset on the Web, by mail and in-person using the critical incident technique.
Results: Depressive symptoms were described using 80 words and phrases clustered into eight categories: futility, sadness, loneliness/isolation, fatigue, fear/worry, lack of motivation, suicidal thoughts and other. A total of 111 self-care strategies were coded into six categories: practising complementary/alternative therapies, talking to others, using distraction techniques, using antidepressants, engaging in physical activity, and using denial/avoidant coping. Sources of information for strategies used were trial and error (31%), healthcare providers (28%), family and friends (20%), classes/reading (8%), clergy (8%), support groups (4%) and other (3%). Overall, 92% of the self-care strategies used were reported as helpful, 4% were sometimes helpful and 4% were not helpful.
Conclusions: People living with HIV use numerous effective self-care strategies to manage depressive symptoms. Further study is needed to validate the use of these strategies across populations, to standardize dose, duration and frequency, and to measure their effectiveness.