HIV Affected and Vulnerable Youth

HIV Affected and Vulnerable Youth: Prevention Issues and Approaches provides suggestions for support of vulnerable youth who must face chronic disease or death, poverty, drug abuse, and racism, as well as the tribulations that accompany adolescence. Social workers, case managers, psychologists, and nurses who work with HIV-affected and vulnerable youth and their families will find unique recommendations on how to assist these individuals in resisting risky behaviors.

This unique collection of research studies expands on the current knowledge while informing us of how much more there is to be learned. This informative book will enlighten you about the children and mothers who are most likely to be affected by the HIV disease, the poor people of color living in substandard housing who are subjected to discrimination and social isolation. The multiple losses experienced by these women and children because of infection, crime, and substance abuse are included in this valuable book but most importantly you will discover how you can alleviate some of the stresses caused by these losses. Through HIV Affected and Vulnerable Youth, you will discover multiple ways to successfully help the adolescents in your practice deal with the challenges inherent to HIV, economic hardships, and substance abuse.

Comprehensive and intelligent, this important book will help you address the needs of HIV-affected children or families with humanity, sensitivity, and ethnically sensitive interventions. With HIV Affected and Vulnerable Youth, you will find unique interventions to help the youth and family in your community by:

• discovering how facing the mortality of an HIV-infected family member has profound psychological effects on a child or adolescent and how you can help ease this crisis for your clients
• understanding why many youth who must cope with the eminent death of a family member deal with this crisis by engaging in risky behaviors which may result in HIV infection for themselves
• realizing that the lack of education about HIV, how it is transmitted, and how to prevent transmission may be part of the problem for high-risk youth
• learning how some HIV-positive children exhibit stable functioning and resilience in coping with their health, but have difficulties exhibiting the same stability in other aspects of their lives
• realizing that the social stigma surrounding HIV has not lost its intensity and that this stigma is a part of the everyday reality for HIV-affected children and their families