In the Shadow of the Epidemic: Being HIV Negative in the Age of AIDS (AIDS Awareness) Book

Walt Odets, clinical psychologist and member of the San Francisco gay community, articulates many of the complex, ambivalent and powerful feelings about being HIV negative and gay, demanding a major reassessment of our response to those who are surviving AIDS, be they negative or positive. This is a book for the non-professional reader who is concerned with AIDS and the issues that now face gay men and gay communities. It is also for clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, and some of the most compelling material comes from the personal testimonies of patients recorded in Odets' own clinical work. Odets is sensitive to potential accusations of impropriety in addressing the needs of HIV negative men while others are dying, and is at pains to point out that this should not be taken as abandonment of those who are positive or ill with AIDS. Too often, Odets says, negative men are dismissed as "worried well". As a result, the gay male and bisexual community is suffering a second, uncontrolled epidemic - a psychological one - manifested in mental health problems, panic attacks, obsessive compulsive disorders and hypochondriasis. The work explores in depth the destructive nature of this psychological epidemic, including survivor guilt, the mental strain imposed on "serodiscordant" couples, coping with multiple losses and anticipatory grief.Read More