Exposure to HIV in Brazilian adolescents: the impact of psychiatric symptomatology.

OBJECTIVES

To examine associations between psychiatric symptomatology and HIV-positive status in adolescents who sought HIV testing at a public health center in Brazil.

METHOD

In a cross-sectional study, 388 adolescents assessed for their HIV status were also evaluated for psychiatric symptomatology using the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R). The impact of potential confounding variables such as risk behaviors was ascertained using the Brazilian version of the Risk Assessment Battery (RAB).

RESULTS

Overall seropositivity rate was 6.2%. Seropositives had significantly higher scores in all dimensions of psychiatric symptomatology in the SCL-90-R (P < 0.05 and effect sizes > 0.5 in all dimensions). In multiple analyses, with the inclusion of 3 composite variables (sex-risk, drug-risk, and psychiatric symptomatology), only psychiatric symptoms were associated with positive HIV status (OR = 1.88, CI95% = 1.06-3.34; P = 0.032).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest that amongst young people asking for HIV testing in Brazil, seropositivity is associated with psychological symptoms and that screening for the latter would therefore be appropriate in this context.