Alice Siwela

Counselling an Adolescent with Hiv Alice Siwela

Adolescents are developmentally at difficult crossroads. Their need for independence and their evolving decisional capacity intersect and compete with concrete thinking processes, risk taking behaviours, pre-occupation with self-image and the need to belong with their peers. This makes it challenging to attract and sustain adolescents' focus on maintaining their health, particularly for those with disability and chronic illnesses such as cancer, HIV and AIDS. Adolescents living with HIV and disability in educational settings face a lot of challenges ranging from social stigma, loss of role fear and anxiety. They live in fear of rejection, isolation and stigmatisation is real. Poor nutrition, unfriendly infrastructure, indecent homes and inaccessibility to proper medical provisions some of the challenges they encounter. Therefore, every effort must be made to counsel and engage them in support groups so as to empower and help them maintain good health for a long time. This book sheds light on counselling approaches that will enable the adolescent with HIV to rebuild his or her wounded self-image.