HIV/AIDS and mental disability: The role of stigma

Abstract

Serious mental illness, mental retardation, and HIV/AIDS are highly stigmatized conditions. Little is known about how people respond to people who have more than one stigmatized condition. Since some seriously mentally ill and some mentally retarded people are infected with HIV, it is important to understand better how people respond to combined conditions. Using an experimental design (ie. Paired Comparisons), this issue was examined.