HIV/AIDS Counselling Discourses

The central premise of this work is that language plays a significant role in healthcare delivery and mediating people¿s experiences of, and beliefs about, health and illness. A very important reason for embarking on HIV/AIDS communication with a particular interest in doctor/patient communication is because it has been noticed that talking about health generally and HIV/AIDS in particular is a very complicated thing. This book investigates a number of counselling strategies used during this encounter in five of its counselling phases (Pre-test, Post-test, Adherence, therapeutic and prenatal). It also looks at the effective tools with which to understand the complex communication of counsellors/patients; Linguistic tools as well as paralinguistic elements (voice quality, tone, proxemics, gestures etc.) This book proves that counselling HIV/AIDS is good; appropriate language use in all its forms is the gateway to improving prevention, reducing stigma and promoting adherence.