Systemic hiv/aids counselling: Creating balance in client belief systems

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
There has been considerable emphasis on psychosocial support for people with HIV/AIDS in recent years. Approaches to counselling inevitably reflect the personal style and conceptual framework adopted by the counsellor. Certain patterns, themes and ideas may arise in the context of counselling about HIV/AIDS. These include issues relating to unpredictability, hopelessness, separateness, dying and confidentially. One task of the systemic HIV/AIDS counsellor may be to identify the recursive pattern of a problem, or its complement, with a view to creating balance in a system that is at risk of becoming unbalanced and therefore rigid or ‘stuck’. The theory and practice of this task in the counselling setting is set out in this paper. You have to treat death like any other part of life (Isaac Beshevis Singer, The Family Moskat, 1950)