Representação social da qualidade de vida de jovens vivendo com HIV: uma contribuição para a enfermagem

Abstract

This study aimed at analyzing social representations of the quality of living concerning youngsters. It is a descriptive study with qualitative approach under the light of the Social Representations theoretical framework. The subjects studied comprised 24 youngsters living with HIV, undergoing treatment at five expert care service centers located at the municipalities of Rio de Janeiro, Macaé, and Rio das Ostras in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Data were collected by means of a social class social practice-based questionnaire, in addition to semistructured interviews. The statistical analysis describing the questionnaire was conducted on the basis of the Excel software and the analysis of the interviews was conducted on the basis of lexical analysis on the IRAMUTEC software. The profile of the group concerned was characterized by males (66.7%), ranging between 21 and 24 years of age (54.1%), either finished high school or begun college (50.0%), having a job (50.0%), on a diagnosis for 4 years or less (66.6%), on antiretroviral therapy for 6 months or less (45.4%), and regarding their own health as good/very good (50%). After inferential analysis, the corpus comprehended by the total number of interviews was named “Social representations and higher quality of living promoting practices concerning youngsters living with HIV”. Two subcorpus came out as “Social Representations of quality of living and their predicting aspects”, comprehending class 1 (23.6%) entitled “Quality of living multidimensionality within the HIV context”; class 4 (19.6%) “Family and social support networks for the youngsters’ quality of living”; and class 5 (21.4%) “Diagnosis impact on the youngsters’ quality of living”. The second textual set was named “HIV control and follow-up policies and impact on quality of living”, and it contemplates classes 2 (12.2%) “Impact of health care services on the youngsters’ quality of living”; and 3 (23.1%) “Antiretroviral therapy and its impact on the youngsters’ quality of living". Results showed that the social representations of quality of living are rooted in health and wellbeing, holds an imagetic dimension of the antiretroviral therapy, regarded as essential to sustaining both health standards and quality of living. Conclusions show that stigma and prejudice are core issues to the negative impact on the participants’ quality living. That requires, therefore, psychosocial and relational care actions, which may either overcome or offset those expressions.