Vítimas e culpadas: representações sociais sobre mulheres que vivem com HIV

Abstract

Introduction: The objective was to grasp the social representations of health professionals about women living with HIV. Materials and Methods: Qualitative and descriptive research based the Theory of Social Representations. Interviews were conducted with 37 professionals from reference HIV services in Belém-Pará, from September 2012 to June 2013. Results: The corpus was analyzed through Alceste software, generating five classifications, among these: social representations of the health professionals on people living with HIV. Discussion: Illustrative lexicons of the classification pointed to the victimization and culpability of women with HIV. There are positive and negative contents depending on the mode of contamination. Conclusions: HIV arouses negative feelings: grief, anger and guilt. Women are categorized and judged by professionals, considered victims or blamed. There is need for continuing education policies for health professionals on HIV so they can deconstruct said content.