Mental health needs of adolescents living with HIV

We know there is an increasing recognition of the substantial unmet mental health needs of adolescents living with HIV, who have higher rates of depression and other common mental health problems than their peers who are HIV negative, as well as a connection being made between mental health and wellbeing with adherence and viral load suppression. 

At Zvandiri, we like to engage young people in their own story telling and advocacy initiatives.  We have found when we support young people to reflect on the experiences in their lives and then help them to learn the skills to put them in to creative media, this is both therapeutic for us as young people, but also effective in advocacy. Here, 5 young people from Zvandiri speak about their mental health and the support that they need. They developed this short film for WHO’s TeleECHO webinar on integrating mental health and HIV services for adolescents.