[A quarter century of psychosocial haemophilia-counseling]

With the development of clotting-factors in the seventies the haemophilia patients were released from being handicapped and began to live a quite normal life. Thus, psychosocial counselling did not seem to be necessary. But the impact of HIV-infection to the world of haemophilia was so intense that professional help was offered at the Munich Hemophilia Centre since 1985. During the preceeding 25 years we talked to about 120 patients and relatives every year in more than 10000 psychotherapeutic talks. 70 of our patients were HIV-infected. For about half of them we took care until they died on AIDS or of liver-disease. The other 50 patients (HIV-negative) were also distressed enormously. At the beginning the highlights in counselling were e. g. fear of manifestation of AIDS, dying and death, social stigma. Around 1993 with the decoding of HCV and the first useful HIV therapies the topics in counselling changed: New HIV-medical-treatment, menacing by HCV, wish for own children due to improved HIV medical care etc.

Our experiences have shown that self esteem and social integration of haemophilia patients have reached again normality. By our psychosocial counselling we would like to contribute.