Perceived Stigma and Its Associated Factors Among People Living With Hiv/aids in Bharatpur Art Center, Chitwan District, Nepal

Background Stigma due to HIV is an attitude and belief that negatively affects people with HIV. This stigma and discrimination affect the emotional well-being and mental health of people living with HIV, acting as a significant barrier to HIV prevention, treatment, care, support, and social integration. The aim of this study was to identify the perceived stigma level of PLHIV and its associated factors in the Bharatpur ART center, Chitwan, Nepal. Objectives To determine the prevalence of perceived stigma and its associated factors among PLHIV of Bharatpur ART Center, Chitwan District, Nepal. Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among 348 people from the Bharatpur ART center, Chitwan District, Nepal, using a systematic sampling procedure. A face-to-face interview was taken by using semi-structured tools for independent variables, and the Bunn standard HIV Stigma Scale tool was used to measure the dependent variables. Stigma was measured in terms of felt stigma, Public Attitudes Concern (PAC), Disclosure Concern (DC), Negative Self-Image (NSI), and Enacted Stigma (ES), as well as overall stigma. Result Overall stigma was found to be 58.9%, where the percentages of each individual domain, NSI, PAC, DC, and ES, were reported as 65.2%, 53.7%, 56.9%, and 49.7%, respectively. On bivariate analysis, age, place of residence, ethnicity, reason for testing, exclusion due to HIV, hopelessness due to HIV, and depressed due to HIV were significantly associated with the dependent variable. Conclusion The research findings reported a significant level of high stigma that may act as a major hindrance to achieving the goal of Nepal’s National HIV strategic plan (95-95-95) by the end of 2026, as stigma serves as a major barrier in confronting high-risk individuals towards HIV testing and counseling services. Moreover, negative self-image is substantially higher than the other domains, which shows a dreadful impact on their overall well-being. The result from this study highlights the urgency of its findings to be shared among concerned stakeholders so as to step up in reducing stigma and discrimination among PLHIV.