Abstract:
The purposes of this research were to study the effect of individual counseling on self-esteem of HIV infected persons and to investigate the session impact during three phases of individual counseling : initial, middle, and terminal sessions as perceived by the HIV infected persons. Session impacts including session depth, smoothness, positivity and arousal. The research design was the pretest-posttest control group design. The participants were 36 HIV infected persons at Phrabatnampu Temple in Lop-Buri province. They were randomly assigned to an experimental group and 2 control groups, each group included 12 participants. The experimental group participated in individual counseling for 7 sessions, a session of one and a half hour, one or two sessions a week over a period of 5 consecutive weeks, which made approximately ten and a half hour. The first control group participated in a program providing AIDS and self care information for 7 sessions, a session of one and a half hour, which made approximately ten and a half hour. The second control group received regular care from the temple. During the pretest, posttest, 2-week follow-up and 4-week follow-up studies, all participants completed The Self-Esteem Inventory. A two-way ANOVA repeated measures was used for data analysis. At the end of the initial, the middle and the terminal sessions of counseling participants in the experimental group completed the Depth, Smoothness, Positivity and Arousal indexes of the Session Evaluation Questionnaire. The data was analyzed using a one-way ANOVA repeated measures. The major findings were as follows : 1. The posttest scores on self-esteem of the experimental group were higher than its pretest scores and higher than the posttest scores of the 2 control groups at .01 level of significance. 2. The 2-week and 4-week follow-up scores of the experimental group were higher than its pretest scores and higher than the follow-up scores of the 2 control groups at .05 level of significance. 3. The experimental group perceived high level of beneficial effects of counseling. The terminal session impact scores on depth, smoothness, positivity, and arousal of the experimental group were higher than its initial session scores at .01 level of significance