AIDS education for patients with chronic mental illness

Despite the AIDS epidemic's impact, development of prevention and risk-reduction programs has been slow, especially for patients with chronic mental illness. These patients may be at particular risk for HIV transmission and acquisition due to characteristics of their illness. Despite a paucity of such program descriptions in the literature and widespread concern that exposure of such patients to educational material related to sexuality or AIDS would be overstimulating, an effective and safe curriculum to teach risk-reduction can be designed. This paper describes such a program at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, in Boston.