Department of Studies in Psychology, University of Mysore, Mysore-570 006. E-mail: rkravi777@gmail.com
Online published on 13 February, 2012.
The psychosocial wellbeing of the children living with HIV/AIDS is seeking growing international as well as national attention of academicians. Karnataka state has an alarming estimate of 11,506 registered cases of children living with HIV/AIDS. HIV positive children are considered as highly deprived class of society. They are deprived of one or more necessities of life. These children are left helpless, abandoned, neglected by the parents/caregivers due to social, economic and personal reasons like gender, domicile, age, etc. It is necessary to know whether positive children who are devoid of family life with the emotional warmth grow up normally. How well they are able to cope with themselves and adjust to the demands of the environment/society around them. In this context, objectives of the present study are formulated; 1) To study the level of adjustment among male and female children living with HIV/AIDS. 2) To study the level of adjustment among rural and urban children living with HIV/AIDS. A clinical based survey was conducted three districts of Karnataka State. The sample consisted of total 300; among them 150 were male and 150 were female children living with HIV/AIDS. Selected children were measured on adjustment inventory developed by Sinha and Singh (1993). The findings indicated that female children living with HIV/AIDS were having statistically higher adjustment problems than male children. Again rural children living with HIV/AIDS were having higher social, emotional and educational adjustment problems compared to urban children. The interaction effects of gender and domicile were found to be highly significant on social, emotional and educational adjustment problems. The study discusses the implications of the findings and need for interventions to improve quality of life of children living with HIV/AIDS.
