Association of depression with social support and self-esteem among HIV positives

Depression in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) positives has implications such as poor drug compliance, lower quality of life, faster progression to full blown Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and higher mortality.

To assess depression, social support and self-esteem in HIV positives and to find out the association of depression with social support and self-esteem among HIV positive patients.

Kasturba Medical College (KMC) Hospital, a tertiary care hospital, Mangalore, India and cross-sectional design.

Study constituted of 105 HIV positive subjects; depression was assessed using BDI (Beck depression inventory), social support was assessed using Lubben social network scale and self-esteem was assessed using Rosenberg self-esteem scale.

Kappa statistics was used to measure the agreement of depression assessed by BDI with clinical diagnosis of depression. Logistic regression analyses were done to find out predictors of depression among HIV positives. All analyses were conducted using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 11.5.

Depression was found to be present in 43.8% of HIV positives. Among the study subjects, 10.5% had high risk for isolation and low self-esteem was found only among 5.7%. In univariate analysis both gender and self-esteem were significantly associated with depression whereas in multivariate analysis only self-esteem was found to be significantly associated with depression.

The present study shows a high prevalence of depression in HIV positive patients along with the importance of self-esteem.