HIV Prevention With the Mentally Ill: Motivation-Skills

Our long-term objective is to reduce the incidence of HIV for people with serious and persistent mental illness (SMI) by developing an effective primary and secondary HIV risk reduction intervention for this population which can be easily delivered in the "real world" settings in which patients routinely receive care. Research findings document that the incidence of HIV infection, sexually transmitted diseases, and sexual and drug use behaviors are high among people with serious mental illness, as evidenced by rates of HIV infection and other sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs). A variety of factors underlie risky behaviors for the SMI, including cognitive impairment, poor judgment, affective instability and impulsiveness.

Skills-building (SB) HIV risk reduction interventions, typically delivered in a small group formats, have had modest success in increasing HIV-related knowledge and improving risk reduction skills for people with SMI, although these effects are transient. As skills-building interventions are currently the standard of care in most research and clinical settings for HIV prevention, it is important to identify new ways to augment these interventions.

A relatively new and promising addition to the armamentarium of individualized interventions is Motivational Interviewing (MI). MI is an approach designed to reduce ambivalence and enhance intrinsic motivation to change problematic behaviors. Previous researchers have noted effects for both SB and MI interventions independently, however, these effects tend to be fairly modest. Integrating these approaches in a systematized way allows us to test the degree to which this combination is useful, given that both motivation and skills are clearly important in effecting health behavior change.

Our specific primary aims are the following:

1. To adapt SB and MI interventions for HIV risk reduction for men and women with serious and persistent mental illness (SMI).