Human immunodeficiency virus seropositivity self-disclosure to sexual partners: a qualitative study

The article examines the process of human immunodeficiency virus seropositivity self-disclosure to sexual partners. The few studies that have been done in regard to this topic are quantitative and epidemiologic in nature and concentrate on urban gay men. In contrast, the findings described here are qualitative, and they are from HIV-positive small-town southwesterners, heterosexuals included. Five basic topics emerged as salient in regard to the self-disclosure process: a disclosee's need to know, nondisclosure conjoined with safer sex practice, disbelief and denial among the seronegative and untested, strategies for evaluating potential disclosees, and rejection or acceptance by the disclosee. According to participants, self-disclosure does not necessarily lead to safer sex because partners often do not want it. Participants see a lack of prophylactic effort in partners as resulting from informed choice, even if self-disclosure, they also experienced rejection. Rejection can be direct or perfidious. Participants compared partners' often problematic reactions with those of children, which they praised. Future research will lead to the creation of formal guidelines for use by health care professionals in promoting secondary prevention practices, such as condom use, and in determining how best to serve HIV-positive clients.