The level of risky sexual behaviour and psychological characteristics of patients with HIV infection, serving a sentence in correction facilities in FCIN of Russia

Abstract

Objective. The assessment of a psychological profile and a level of social adaptation among patients with HIV infection in the penitentiary system.
Materials and methods. Randomly selected HIV-infected prisoners (n=41) from Novosibirsk prisons have passed in-depth interviews and survey on several questionnaires, based on different methods (questionnaires on assessing some social and medical indicators, a questionnaire on the TOBOL system — a clinical testing method, aimed at diagnosing a type of attitude to the disease. The test on 13 kinds of addiction by G. V. Lozova’s system and the test on identifying locus-control by G. Potter method are also included in the questionnaire.
Results and discussion. The survey results showed that it is characteristic for a significant proportion of the examined patients to have a risky sexual behaviour, posing a risk of infecting a partner with HIV. It was stated that most of the tested have the dominance of anosognosic and ergopathetic type of attitude to the disease; there is tendency in developing some forms of chemical and non-chemical addiction and diagnosed prevalence of internal locus of control.