News media have focused on the psychiatric difficulties people with AIDS experience as a result of having AIDS, such as depression and AIDS-caused dementia. Little attention is paid to AIDS-related mental health problems of people who already have psychiatric diagnoses. Even less attention is paid to the difficulties having a psychiatric label may cause in getting good diagnosis and treatment of the physical problems caused by being HIV positive.
Just as we pay special attention to Pediatric AIDS and Geriatric AIDS, we need to pay attention to "Psychiatric AIDS." Poor nutrition, homelessness or sub-standard housing, substance abuse, lack of accurate information and, particularly, lack of adequate medical care all contribute to increasing the risks of becoming HIV positive and progressing to AIDS for mental health recipients.
Some mental health services recipients may not be functional enough to seek medical treatment, but those who do seek medical treatment face another problem: Insensitive medical personnel, upon seeing a psychiatric diagnosis on the chart may attribute reports of physical symptoms to the psychiatric condition or to hypochondria. Repeated medical complaints may be viewed as "Munchausen's Syndrome" -- a love of visiting doctors.
There is seven times the national average of HIV positive cases among psychiatric patients in private hospitals and ten times the national average in public hospitals. One in five homeless mentally ill are HIV positive.