Unsupportive social interactions, availability of social support, and coping: Their relationship to mood disturbance among African Americans living with HIV

This study examined the relationship between perceptions of the availability of social support and enacted unsupportive social interactions relative to anxious and depressive mood among African Americans with HIV (N = 116). Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that greater satisfaction with the availability of social support was associated with lower levels of mood disturbance. In addition, HIV-related unsupportive responses received from other people accounted for a significant portion of unique variance in mood disturbance, beyond that accounted for by the availability of positive social support. As predicted, the direction of the association was that greater levels of unsupportive social interactions were related to more mood disturbance. Results also indicated that the level of HIV-related unsupportive social interactions was positively related to the use of the coping strategy of disengagement/denial, which, in turn, was associated with greater mood disturbance.