ABSTRACT
In the next decade, family therapists will be seeing in their practices increasing numbers of people at various stages of HIV infection. The U.S. Public Health Service now projects a cumulative total of 270,000 cases by 1991, with projected 180,000 deaths; by 1992, 365,000 cases; and by 1993, 453,000 cases. The current reservoir of infection is enormous and deadly: Between 1 and 1.5 million Americans are thought to be infected currently (Needle, Leach, & Graham-Tomasi, 1989). Each of these people is involved with family, from the gay man struggling to reconcile his relationships with family of origin and family of choice, to the hemophiliac who has unknowingly infected wife and children but who cannot reveal his family's tragedy to outsiders who do not even know of his hemophilia, to the adolescent infected by a casual affair whose family must deal with his or her illness and impending death.
