Psychosocial and behavioural interventions towards HIV risk reduction for serodiscordant couples in Africa: A systematic review

South African Journal of Psychiatry

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Psychosocial and behavioural interventions towards HIV risk reduction for serodiscordant couples in Africa: A systematic review
 
Creator Mashaphu, Sibongile Burns, Jonathan K. Wyatt, Gail E. Vawda, Naseema B.
 
Subject Psychiatry; Public Health HIV/AIDS; Africa; Serodiscordant (mixed; discordant); risk reduction intervention (therapy; counseling)
Description Background: Sexual transmission of HIV frequently occurs in the context of a primary relationship between two partners; however, HIV prevention interventions generally focus on individuals at risk, rather than specifying couples as a unit of change and analysis, neglecting the crucial role that partners may play in sexual behaviour. This article reviews published scientific literature addressing couple-oriented HIV counselling and testing and other behavioural interventions using an online search for peer-reviewed papers.Methods: A systematic review was conducted to evaluate what has been published on psychosocial interventions in HIV serodiscordant couples in Africa. Electronic databases were searched from January 1990 to December 2015. Quality assessment of included studies was conducted using the Systematic Appraisal of Quality in Observational Research tool.Results: The electronic database searches initially retrieved 493 records; after cross-referencing, removing duplicates and applying strict inclusion and exclusion criteria, only eight papers were included in this review. All the studies under review showed that couples-focused counselling and educational programmes were associated with positive outcomes including reduced HIV transmission, reduced unprotected sex, increased rates of status disclosure and high levels of treatment adherence.Conclusions: The literature on interventions for HIV serodiscordant couples is sparse. However, most interventions indicate that couples-focused interventions are effective in HIV risk reduction. In spite of the limited available data and repeated recommendations by different health authorities, couple-centred approaches to HIV prevention have not been implemented on a large scale.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2018-06-05
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Review
Format text/html application/epub+zip application/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v24i0.1136
 
Source South African Journal of Psychiatry; Vol 24 (2018); 8 pages 2078-6786 1608-9685
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/article/view/1136/1050 https://sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/article/view/1136/1049 https://sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/article/view/1136/1051 https://sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/article/view/1136/1044
 
Coverage Africa 1995-2015 Behavoiural interventions for Couples
Rights Copyright (c) 2018 Sibongile Mashaphu, Jonathan K. Burns, Gail E. Wyatt, Vawda Naseema https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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