How HIV patients construct liveable identities in a shame based culture: the case of Singapore

Ho, Lai Peng; Goh, Esther C. L.

The participants' experience with stigma and shame precluded them from thinking of HIV as a usual chronic disease, and three of them compared their experience of having HIV to those having cancer and felt that having cancer was preferable. All chronic diseases are stigmatized, as having an illness is deemed to be a form of "deviance" from the norm, although the degree of stigma varies according to the disease type (Chaudoir & Fisher, 2010) . Studies have shown that HIV is more stigmatized than other chronic diseases such as cancer (Fife & Wright, 2000) and infectious diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and tuberculosis (Mak et al., 2006) . The experiences of the participants defied the notion that HIV is a chronic disease like any other. Not only is HIV associated with sexual deviance, it is also a disease which is attributable to the individual's behaviour, perceived to be contagious and a risk to others, incurable, and poorly understood by the community (Alonzo & Reynolds, 1995) , especially so in Asian societies heavily influenced by Confucian values.