The role of personality, coping style and social support in health-relatedquality of life in HIV infection

Objective: To determine the role of health status, personality and coping s tyle, on self-report health-related quality of life (QoL). Methods: Partici pants were HIV seropositive individuals at all disease stages from three sa mples (a) gay/bisexual men from the UK, (b) injecting drug users from the U K, (c) injecting drug users from Italy. All participants completed question naires evaluating QoL, personality, coping style and social support. Explic it models of the relationships between the measured variables based on a re view of the literature were tested using structural equation modelling. Res ults: Health status was modestly associated with the physical but not the p sychological aspects of QoL (beta = 0.44). Neuroticism was strongly associa ted with psychological QoL (beta = -0.73) but only weakly with physical QoL (beta = -0.21). The samples did not differ in either the pattern or the ma gnitude of these relationships. Mediating factors such as coping style, soc ial support and other personality variables had only a weak influence on th e role of Neuroticism. Conclusions: Neuroticism had a strong influence on h ealth-related QoL that was independent of health status. Neuroticism was mo re strongly associated with the psychological aspects of QoL than health st atus. Coping styles and the other psychological variables assessed had only a weak mediating influence on this relationship.