Yasuhiro Oyama

HIV/AIDS is experienced as a disease that relates to physical, psychological, and social dimensions. Individuals with HIV/AIDS are more likely to experience complex psychological problems including sexual identity, fear of social stigma, and existential anxiety. In treating individuals with HIV, the importance of psychological support has been noted; however, there is little empirical research concerning its role and effects. This study aimed to examine the effect of a trial counseling conducted on HIV positive participants. The changes in personality were assessed by comparing pre-, mid-, and post-intervention, with analysis of multi-dimensional data gathered by psychological questionnaires, protocols of subjective experiences and self-evaluations by the participants, and case records. The findings showed improvements in depression, anxiety, and chief complaints. Moreover, in the process of counseling, themes of object relations and loss were identified as core problems that can be addressed in psychotherapy.

The present study investigated the processes in which counselors elicit desirable changes from their clients in counseling sessions. A previous study (Nagaoka & Komori, 2009) recorded a counseling session by an expert counselor, which represents role playing, and analyzed client-counselor synchrony of body movement, beginning style of counselor's turn (e.g., utterances starting with back-channel expressions), and client's long pauses, to refer each other according to time series. The results indicated that a temporal change of body movement synchrony corresponded to the time series change of beginning style of counselor's turn, or to the occurrence of client's long pauses. On the basis of the results from the previous study, the present study focused on the points just before the changes in nonverbal behaviors, and analyzed the clinical psychological interpretation of the client's and the counselor's utterances and the introspective reports by the client and the counselor. The results indicated that changes in mental processes of the client and the counselor occurred coincident with changes in nonverbal behavior. The counselor's skills that elicit changes of their client's mental processes were discussed.