Confidentiality
After you are diagnosed, the only people who know your status will be you, your doctor and other health care workers involved in your care at the HIV clinic.
- Healthcare workers can not tell anyone about your results without your permission, including your family doctor or your partner.
- Who you choose to tell, and when you tell them, is for you to decide.
Getting support
Think about who you can trust with this information. Think about whether this is news they will be able to deal with. Once you tell someone you can not take that information back.
- If you think that the person you want to tell will not be able to cope, then you may have to do the research first, to help them with the news.
- If you do not want to talk to a friend or family members, then at least speak to one of the health advisers or counsellors at your clinic. They should be able to help you with your first questions. They can also help you access other support services.
- Outside the clinic, many HIV community organisations run phonelines and support groups.
Friends and family
Because HIV is now largely treatable, there is rarely any urgency to have to tell other people until you feel ready to do this. You can take time to learn about HIV and treatment before you tell family and friends who may still be shocked and worried.
- Telling someone your HIV status may change how they think about you or how they treat you. Many people may have a more positive response now because there is treatment. Many others will have a gut reaction based on fear and worry. Stigma is still a problem in many communities.
- On the other hand, keeping things secret in the long-term is likely to cause you stress. It will make a big difference and will help you to have at least one or two close friends who you can talk to.
Peer support
Knowing other people who are also HIV positive can made life a lot easier. Being HIV positive without knowing anyone else in the same circumstances is difficult.
It really helps to be able to talk to someone who is living with HIV.
Here at Body Positive Dorset we have a Blog that you can read and join, or simply send us a message with your questions. We have all been in the same situation as you, and have been through what you are going through now. So we are here to help and reassure you that you are not alone. We may be able to put you directly in touch with someone in your area.
Online forums are a good way to communicate with other people, especially if your are more geographically isolated. The best and most established is run by poz.com. Although it is based in the US the poz forums include a lot of contributions from people elsewhere.
More recently, the THT set up a similar forum based in the UK called myHIV.org . This requires a more complicated registration process but you can still do this using a made up name if you want to do this anonymously. You need a working email address to register.
