Perceived social support, anxiety, and disclosure of HIV Serostatus among the youth living with HIV/AIDS in Kampala

Abstract

The study investigated the relationship between perceived social support, anxiety, and Disclosure of HIV serostatus to sexual partners among the youth living with Kampala , and it was conducted on a sample of 155 people living with HIV. The researcher used simple random sampling and questionnaire as a tool to collect data. Hypotheses 1,2, and 3 were tested using Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient (r) to establish the relationships between the variables and simple linear regression was used to test the fourth hypothesis to determine whether Anxiety was a mediating variable between perceived social support and disclosure of HIV serostatus to partner among youth living with HIV. The results revealed that there was a significant relationship between perceived social support and disclosure of HIV status P-value (0.000), however there was no significant relationship between perceived social support and anxiety P-value (0.408). There was also no significant relationship between anxiety and disclosure P-value (0.571). The linear regression results indicated that anxiety did not mediate the relationship between perceived social support and disclosure, P-value (0.831>0.05). This implies that, in the presence of anxiety, the relationship between perceived social support and disclosure reduced from 0.202 to 0. This study recommends that organizations like Alive Medical Services and other government institutions should continue providing social support as a way of encouraging and motivating the youth to disclose.