Psychotropic Substance Abuse in Gay and Bisexual Men Living with HIV infection in Hong Kong

Abstract

A case-control study aimed to compare the distribution of psychiatric diagnoses in HIV infected gay/bisexual men with and without psychotropic substance misuse. Methods: 60 subjects were recruited at the community and their demographic data, HIV-related clinical data psychiatric co-morbidity using SCID-IV and substance misuse diagnosis were determined. Results: 96.7% of the cases reported use of methamphetamine for chemsex and 73% of them suffered from DSM-5 criteria for stimulant use disorder. 63% of them were detected to be HIV-positive within 2 years after their first reported methamphetamine misuse. 50% of the cases had psychiatric comorbidity compared to 16.7% of controls had psychiatric comorbidity. Conclusions: There's a high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity in HIV infected gay men who had psychotropic substance misuse. The results also suggested that methamphetamine appeared to be associated with the high prevalence.