Adolescents constitute one of the fastest growing populations of HIV-infected individuals today. For a variety of reasons, adolescents living with HIV/AIDS constitute a population at risk for psychosocial adjustment to their illness. First, like all adolescents with chronic diseases, they confront a variety of non-normative stresses that can increase their risk for psychological and social problems, as well as alter their development trajectories. In addition, many of these adolescents, especially those who acquired infection through sexual practices and drug related activities, have histories of physical and sexual abuse, parental neglect, parental alcohol and substance abuse, and other significant stressors which are recognized risk factors for poor psychosocial morbidity. Over the last decade, advances in the treatment of HIV disease have significantly extended survival, allowing most infected individuals who learn of their infection and enter treatment to now live with HIV/AIDS as a chronic disease. Building on our previous work and given the scarcity of information about the lived experiences of HIV-infected adolescents we propose a qualitative study of 80 HIV-infected African-American and Latino youth, age 13-24 years, residing in New York City (40 males, 40 females) to assess the adaptive challenges, coping responses, the specific role of substance use in adaptive efforts and risky behavior; and how HIV infection in adolescents may interfere with the accomplishment of age-specific developmental tasks.
