Daily stigma and daily emotional well-being among people living with HIV: Testing a buffering hypothesis of social support during the COVID-19 pandemic

This study examined the relationship between daily perceived stigma and daily emotional well-being among people living with HIV/AIDS during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, a buffering effect of perceived emotional support on this relationship was verified. The participants were 133 patients with a medically confirmed diagnosis of HIV infection. Data were collected using online diaries completed every evening for five consecutive weekdays in three bursts separated by 6 months. Dynamic multilevel analyses showed a significant positive autoregressive effect for daily stigma in each burst. Additionally, increased stigma predicts increased negative affect and decreased positive affect the next day. However, these effects differed across bursts. Thus, to some extent, daily HIV/AIDS stigma was found to predict a decrease in affective well-being the next day. The buffering effect of perceived emotional support reduced this decline but was also time-limited, probably because of the later established direction in these relationships at the individual level and/or because of changes in the course of the pandemic. The results provide insights on the role of daily stigma in shaping affective well-being, suggesting that it may be a significant source of short-term negative emotional consequences for PWLH.