A telephone-delivered coping improvement group intervention for middle-aged and older adults living with HIV/AIDS

Background: By 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts that 50% of all cases of HIV/AIDS in the United States will be in persons 50 years of age or older. Purpose: This pilot research tested whether a 12-session, coping improvement group intervention delivered via teleconference technology could improve life quality in 90 middle-age and older adults living with HIV/AIDS. Method: This research used a lagged-treatment control group design. Forty-four HIV-infected persons 50-plus years of age participated in a coping improvement group intervention immediately after study enrollment, whereas 46 individuals received the intervention after their time-matched immediate treatment participants completed the intervention. Participants completed self-administered surveys that assessed depressive and psychological symptoms, life-stressor burden, ways of coping, coping self-efficacy, and loneliness. Results: Outcome analyses indicated that, compared to their delayed treatment counterparts, immediate treatment participants reported fewer psychological symptoms, lower levels of life-stressor burden, increased coping self-efficacy, and less frequent use of avoidance coping. After receiving the intervention, delayed treatment participants reported greater coping self-efficacy and less psychological symptomatology, life-stressor burden, and loneliness. However, the intervention demonstrated little ability to reduce depressive symptoms in this sample of HIV-infected older adults diagnosed with depression. Conclusions: Although findings from this research suggest that telephone-delivered, coping improvement group interventions have potential to facilitate the adjustment efforts of HIV-infected older adults, more rigorous evaluations of this intervention modality for this group are needed.