this long term survivor honors world aids day
- Rod Rushing
- Jul 22, 2020
- 3 min read
“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment, he needs help.” ~Thich Nat Hahn
<ol> <li><a href='https://afterthepop.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/02-song-to-the-siren-1.m4a'>02 Song to the Siren 1</a></li> </ol>
AIDS SURVIVOR SYNDROME (ASS)
What is AIDS Survivor Syndrome (ASS)?
What is AIDS Survivor Syndrome (ASS)? reposted from letskickass.org
Is what happens after the AIDS tsunami recedes. When the survivors of the crisis have had time to evaluate the loss, grief and fear of the tragedy that unfolded. It describes where we are now 30+ years into the AIDS epidemic. Life is going on but some of us are still are still traumatized.
ASS is a perfectly natural response to surviving a life-threatening trauma. In the case of the AIDS epidemic it was a crisis that lasted 20 years. It exists on a spectrum from very mild to severe.
AIDS Survivor Syndrome manifests in aimlessness, depression, broken relationships, substance abuse, high-risk behavior and, in its most extreme results in suicide.
The signs include: depression; personality changes; flashes of anger; survivor guilt; anxiety; emotional numbness; insomnia; social withdrawal and isolation; hopelessness; substance abuse; sexual risk-taking; and lack of future orientation. It includes elements of post-traumatic stress (PTS).
Any combination of those and other signs related to surviving when so many loved ones and community members died. It often takes years to manifest after life around the survivors has returned to normal for the people around them.
READ WHAT Al Jazeera America says about AIDS Survivor Syndrome:http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/2/21/living-with-aidssurvivorssyndrome.htmlBut even its proponents admit that it may take some time to convince doctors that ASS is real and open up its sufferers for special treatment. For most of the people in the medical and health care policy communities, “the furthest thing in their mind is ASS,” Anderson said. “We want to say to doctors and health care professionals, if you have someone living with HIV for this many years, you need to understand that these symptoms together add up to a kind of PTSD.”
“Survivor syndrome” was coined by Dr. William G. Niederland to describe what the survivors of the death camps were going through 16 years after the holocaust ended. We are at that point in the history of HIV.
When huge swaths of your family of choice and community die and you survive, and with 50,000 or more people in the US living with HIV, there are wildly varying responses to living after decades of preparing to die.
The evidence of ASS is anecdotal but overwhelming. Health care professionals and therapists often focus on individual symptoms and not the totality of them nor the cause. So it under diagnosed and tragically under treated. It wreaks havoc on survivors and their loved ones and no one is looking for it.
All the optimistic talk about an “AIDS-Free Generation” and “Getting To Zero” sounds exclusionary to long-term HIV/AIDS survivors. If AIDS disappeared tomorrow the psychosocial aspects would remain in tens of thousands of people who lived through the 1980s and 1990s. Many survivors think the end of AIDS will happen after we’re dead. And this is a group whom are already ignored feel ostracized feel even more discounted, like our losses and grief and terror meant nothing. Like the world would rather move on.
One of Let’s Kick ASS’ goals is to research long-term survivors and measure resilience and the effects of ASS. — By Tez Anderson
Here is a video about ASS:
<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/97766152″>Aids Long Term Survivors</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user2331972″>Kelly Dessoye</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
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