With our full-length feature on living with HIV and mental health wellbeing in QX this week (issue 970) we spoke to Pride worker Anthony Babajee about his experiences living as an HIV+ gay man in London…
Tell us a little about yourself…
I’m Ant Babajee, I’m 35 and I do quite a lot of volunteering in the HIV sector – including supporting positive people on Terrence Higgins Trust’s myHIV online forum and contributing occasionally to FS magazine.
When were you diagnosed with HIV? What was your immediate reaction?
It was back in 2007. I had an open and long-distance relationship with my boyfriend at the time. I hooked up with a couple of men online and had bareback sex. If I’m honest, I wasn’t feeling terribly good about myself, so I was starting to take more risks sexually. I knew I was taking a risk, but I wasn’t really clued up about it. I remember the date I was diagnosed very clearly – 2nd January. I think I knew I was positive already, as I’d been ill with what I worked out was probably a seroconversion illness (when your body first mounts a defence against the virus), so it wasn’t as much of a surprise for me as it is for some people. Of course, I couldn’t be sure of my status until I tested. The overwhelming feeling I remember, as well as sadness, was the relief of finally knowing.
Do you think there is a need for greater support to people who are living with HIV’s mental wellbeing?
Yes definitely! There are some fantastic sources of support for people have been recently diagnosed, but often newly diagnosed guys don’t know what’s out there. When volunteering on myHIV I often talk to newly diagnosed guys. I think just talking to someone who’s been through it can be a real help. It’s really important to know if you’ve just been diagnosed that you don’t have to go through it on your own. There’s also a really good guide on GMFA’s website: gmfa.org.uk/positive
Have you ever felt your own experiences of living with HIV have affected your mental wellbeing?
I was suffering from depression when I was diagnosed and I struggled on for quite a while before I sought out help. I completely lost my confidence and found it a real struggle to carry on working. Somehow I did though. I think the turning point for me was going to a newly diagnosed group organised by Terrence Higgins Trust and also a few years later starting medication, which gave me back a lot of emotional and physical energy I’d lost.
Do you think there are still stigmas lingering around a positive status within the gay community? What ideas, if any, would you suggest on how we can work together to change this?
The mere fact you’ve probably struggled to find positive guys to be open and talk about the status should show you that there is a big problem among our community. It’s really difficult to be open about being positive. Because of stigma, sometimes self-imposed, very few gay guys would out themselves as positive in the national media (I recently went on ITV News talking about HIV home-testing kits). The images we get of HIV are the same old and tired images. I’m not suggesting for a moment that living with HIV is a bed of roses – it certainly isn’t. As medication has come on in leaps and bounds, we very rarely see a human face of the virus these days – either in London at large or on the scene.
Because of this lack of faces, we only get medicalised images of blood and syringes. Those are the images of hospitalisation and fear. The fear of getting sick and dying. It’s only by us, as a community, talking about HIV – what’s riskier sex to have and how HIV medication can make transmission of the virus much less likely – that we can make it easier for negative guys to feel less stigma about going to get tested and for those positive guys who know their status to disclose to their partners.
Let’s not let the fear of HIV mean we can’t talk about it. Educate yourself. Don’t shun the guy who was brave enough to tell you he’s positive. The likelihood is you’ll have probably slept with someone who’s positive, whether you knew it or even he knew it. Break the stigma.
Our full length feature upon living with HIV and how it might affect gay men’s mental health wellbeing is in this week’s issue of QX (970), available to read online now and out in the bars and around London today Thursday 10th October. The feature was inspired by Positively UK’s ‘States of Minds‘ study.
