ABSTRACT
Clinicians who work with HIV-infected individuals quickly learn that these clients may evidence a variety of neuropsychiatrie difficulties during the course of their illness. These neuropsychiatrie complications may be the result of a psychological reaction to the trauma of learning of one's HIV seropositivity, with the associated psychosocial stress throughout the course of the illness, and/or HIV-related changes to the central nervous system. Evidence of the presence of HIV can be found in the central nervous system of over half of asymptomatic but infected (seropositive) individuals, and at death, 90 percent of persons with AIDS have neuropathological evidence of central nervous system abnormalities (Navia et al., 1986).
