This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Richard Neugebauer, PhD, MPH; Jim Johnson, PhD
Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center Columbia University New York, NY

JAMA. 1990;264(3):337-338.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

We applaud efforts by Perry and colleagues¹ to focus attention on the psychiatric effects of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome epidemic and, specifically, to assess the possible impact of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing on suicidal ideation. Their article states that 1 week after notification of seropositivity, 27.1% of individuals reported suicidal ideation, whereas at study entry, 28.6% did so. However, as discussed below, their reassuring conclusion that "suicidal ideation did not increase after HIV testing" is not warranted by their data.

For two reasons at least, subjects' reported level of suicidal ideation would be expected to decline from first to second assessment, entirely independent of any effect of learning test results. First, repeated administration of a psychiatric symptom checklist itself produces score decline, a retest artifact that is widely documented in the psychiatric and psychometric literature.^2-4 Extrapolating from previous reports, an artifactual drop to . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?