AIDS and jail: social representations of women in freedom deprivation situations

Abstract

OBJECTIVE To graspthe AIDS social representations built by freedom-deprived women. METHOD Descriptive study with a quali-quantitative approach that involved 174 convicted women in a women's prison in a capital city of the Brazilian northeastern region. Aword-association test was applied in October and November 2014, using AIDS as a stimulus. The corpuswas processed usingIramuteq software. Descending Hierarchical Classification and Correspondence Factor Analysis were applied. RESULTS The content that comprises the social representation of AIDS was influenced by the prison context, which was pervaded by a lack of assistance, lack of knowledge, discrimination, and suffering that disclosed vulnerability to HIV/AIDS factors such as unprotected sex and object sharing. This underlines the stigma and fear of the illness, in addition to favoring and supporting negative feelings and a sense of rejection. CONCLUSION To consider the use of this representational amalgam to ensure a comprehensive, contextualized care can help redirect practices, motivate self-care practices, and reduce prejudiced attitudes.

Social representations of imprisoned women on Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

“…The results of this study evidenced a process of modification in the social representations of AIDS, incorporating elements related to prevention, care and treatment of the disease, which represents evolution in the way the epidemic has been understood, although there are frequent crystallized positions on the infection and its association with death and suffering (6) .…”

“…The relevance expressed in these data was extensively discussed in the Melbourne Declaration, which signaled changes and concerns in the outline of this infection, revealing the emergence of new vulnerable groups, among which are the women deprived of their liberty (3)(4)(5) . In this sense, despite the efforts of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, HIV/AIDS prevention, diagnosis and care actions in the Brazilian prison system are still not in accordance with the care practice provided to other population groups, which favors the perpetuation of the threatening and destructive image of the infection (6) .…”

“…Given this scenario, knowledge about HIV and AIDS is referred to in the literature as an important tool for adopting self-care practices (6,9) , favoring prevention and reduction of risk behavior (10) , above all, in the prison population, whose deprivation of liberty reinforces the precariousness and fragility of the guarantee of sexual rights, due to the bureaucratic and structural limitations existing in the prison establishment (7)(8) .…”

“…The evidence of gaps in the knowledge of women deprived of their freedom in relation to AIDS encourages research that addresses dimensions related to the association between infection and imprisonment. Among the many dimensions, there is highlight to the identification of social representations about AIDS (6) , the guarantee of sexual and reproductive rights of these women (8) , the analysis of individual, sexual, social and contextual conditions that contribute to the adoption of HIV risk behaviors (9)(10) , among other aspects, both nationally and internationally.…”

“…The number of women deprived of their liberty living with HIV has increased over the years, thus, there is a need for investments in sociocultural diagnoses of HIV infection and in prevention and care actions applied in a comprehensive, multisectoral and integrated way, with the purpose of meeting the specific needs of this population (6) . In this sense, it is essential to investigate AIDS from the perspective of these women, seeking to understand the ways in which the infection is represented in the prison environment.…”