Perceived Stigma and Quality of Life AmongWomen Living with HIV/AIDS

Background: quality of life (qol) is a broad construct and can be influenced by many factors. perceived stigma is inevitable in patients with hiv. therefore, it is an important factor to understand their qol. objectives: the current study was conducted to investigate the relationship between the perceived stigma among hiv-positive women and their qol in shiraz, iran. patients and methods: in this quantitative study, 110 hiv-positive women were selected by simple random sampling method. a questionnaire was designed and used as a tool for data collection. the questionnaire included demographic information, internal stigma scale, and the actg short form-21 (sf-21) for measuring qol. data were collected from march to august 2015 and analyzed using t- test, pearson’s correlations, and the multiple regression test with the spss software version 21. results: the mean age of the women was 37.86  9.03 years. most of the participants were infected with hiv/aids through sex with their spouse (78.2%). about one-third of the women had physical symptoms (29.1%) of the hiv disease. the prevalence rate of perceived stigma in the sample was 69.7%. quality of life was significantly different in terms of employment status, emotional support and physical symptoms (p < 0.05). conclusions: a higher level of perceived stigma among hiv-positive women is associated with a considerable decrease in all qol dimensions. thus, more efforts should be considered to reduce the perceived stigma and improve the qol of such patients.