THE RELATIONSHIPS OF HIV STATUS AND HIV RISKY BEHAVIOR WITH READINESSFOR TREATMENT

We investigated the associations of self-reported HIV status and risky injection practices with dependent variables measuring readiness and motivation for treatment and depression among 550 clients at two resid ential drug abuse treatment programs. The results suggest that a posit ive HIV status may be associated with motivation for treatment indepen dently of and more strongly than risky behavior. In multivariable anal yses, HIV status was associated with a scale measuring cons of drug us e (P = 0.006). Risky behavior was associated with the dependent variab les only in univariate analyses. The univariate association between ri sky behavior and depression was confounded by social desirability bias . Further research is needed to determine whether HIV-related variable s predict retention or outcome of treatment.