Eight cases of patients with unfounded fear of AIDS

This article describes eight cases of patients treated at the Psychiatric Department of the University Central Hospital of Turku (UCHT) Finland who all had as a common feature an unfounded fear of AIDS. Three of the patients committed suicide and one of them had overt suicidal tendencies. An unfounded fear of AIDS may be a sign of psychiatric disturbance with increased suicidal risk. Increased fear of AIDS seems to have correlation with media and counselling services. Owing to the fact that these patients primarily seek medical help from other fields of medicine than psychiatry, they are a new problem especially for general hospital psychiatry.