Psychopathology and psychotherapy in the dying AIDS patient

AIDS is not yet the problem in Japan that it is in North American, Europe and Africa, but at the recent 10th International AIDS Conference held in Japan, it was estimated that more Asians will become infected with HIV in the coming year than any other population worldwide. Although the majority of these infections will occur in Thailand and India, it was estimated that there may be as many as 15,000 HIV positive individuals in Japan, a number expected to rise to 26,000 over the next 3 years. Although AIDS is arriving in Japan later, this may give society in general and the medical profession in particular, time to learn from the experiences and mistakes of those who had a head start in dealing with the epidemic. Although this paper deals with the dying AIDS patient, some of the issues faced by the therapist working with any population of dying patients will be reviewed before focusing more specifically, on some of the particular issues seen in working with AIDS patients.