HIV-Affected Adolescents: Vulnerabilities and Protective Factors

As increasing numbers of parents are diagnosed with HIV, their children, especially adolescents, face traumatic circumstances. HIV-affected youth must navigate the developmental milestones of adolescence while facing the difficulties and psychological impact associated with a parent's chronic illness from HIV and/or parental death.

Relative to other chronic or terminal illnesses, loss and bereavement related to parental HIV/AIDS is complicated by AIDS stigma that persists in our society and the fact that, in many cases, more than one family member is HIV-infected, and most HIV-affected adolescents live with their mothers in a single-family household.

Without effective interventions, HIV-affected children and adolescents may themselves be at high risk for HIV-infection due to unresolved trauma and ineffective coping that may result in their own early or unsafe sexual practices and/or experimentation with drugs.

At that same time, opportunities exist for resiliency and transformation among this population. The vulnerability, risk, and resilience model provides an organizing framework for understanding how individual (vulnerabilities and invulnerabilities) and environmental (risks and protective factors) exist on a continuum and interact to determine developmental outcomes.