Why Tell Children: A Synthesis of the Global Literature on Reasons for Disclosing or Not Disclosing an HIV Diagnosis to Children 12 and under.

While the psychological and health benefits of knowing one's HIV diagnosis have been documented for adults and adolescents, practice is still in development for younger children. Moderating conditions for whether or not to tell a child he/she has HIV vary by region and local context. They include accessibility of treatment, consideration of HIV as a stigmatizing condition, prevalence of HIV, and an accompanying presumption that any illness is HIV-related, parent or caregiver concerns about child reactions, child's worsening health, assumptions about childhood and child readiness to know a diagnosis, and lack of policies such as those that would prevent bullying of affected children in schools.

Caregiver's HIV disclosure to children 12 years and under: a review and analysis of the evidence.

A systematic review and analysis of the empirical evidence through June 2010 on HIV disclosure to children 12 and under was conducted using methods validated by the Cochrane group. Fifteen articles focusing on caregiver disclosure (255 total) were analyzed using GradePro 3 software. Results suggest that there is evidence of health and future care planning benefit for HIV+ and healthy children (12 and under) of HIV+ caregivers if the caregiver discloses his/her HIV status to them.

Examining HIV-positive parents' disclosure to their children: a biopsychosocial approach.

In the post HAART era, the biopsychosocial issues now facing HIV-positive parents concerning disclosure of their status to their children need to be understood in the context of chronic disease. This article describes the experiences of 101 adult HIV-positive urban in-treatment mothers and fathers of school-age children on disclosure, psychological distress, social support, and symptom severity. Key variables associated with parents' HIV disclosure were the age of parent and of children in the household, parents' HIV-related symptoms, and parent ethnicity.

Disrupted caregiving and maternal HIV disease: a proposed model for evaluating HIV-affected children's psychosocial adjustment.

A current concern among social science researchers is the impact of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease on the family, especially on the parenting abilities of mothers with HIV. Beginning research suggests that the children of HIV-positive parents are vulnerable, pointing to the impact of HIV disease on children's social and emotional adjustment. The objective of this article is to propose a model of the HIV disease-related disruption of care on children's psychosocial adjustment.

Deconstructing stigma: perceptions of HIV-seropositive mothers and their disclosure to children.

This study addressed the perceptions of stigma and disclosure behavior of HIV-seropositive mothers. Eighty-eight HIV-seropositive women in New York City completed two independent measures of stigma, the Perceived Stigma Scale and the Devaluation-Discrimination Measure. Disclosers (67%) and nondisclosers (33%) were similar in most sociodemographic characteristics-marital status, race, religion and employment, with the exception of age and education.