What to Do about AIDS

What to Do About AIDS: Physicians and Mental Health Professionals Discuss the Issues, edited by Leon McKusick, brings together leading clinicians and researchers at a pivotal moment in the history of the epidemic. First published when HIV/AIDS was still poorly understood and heavily stigmatized, the volume captures the urgency and uncertainty of the early response. Contributors from medicine, psychiatry, psychology, and public health address not only the biological dimensions of the disease but also its profound social and psychological impacts. Their shared aim is to clarify what was then known about transmission, treatment, and prognosis while offering practical guidance for health professionals suddenly confronted with a new and devastating illness.

Framed by McKusick’s introduction, the collection foregrounds the interdependence of medical and mental health approaches. Essays examine clinical care, counseling and support for patients and families, ethical challenges around confidentiality and discrimination, and the public health necessity of education and prevention. The book also highlights the complex intersections of sexuality, politics, and stigma that shaped both the spread of HIV and the societal response to it. By insisting that physicians and mental health workers address the epidemic collaboratively and compassionately, What to Do About AIDS helped lay the groundwork for integrated models of care that remain influential today. Scholarly yet accessible, it stands as both a historical document of the early AIDS crisis and a prescient call for humane, multidisciplinary engagement with one of the defining public health challenges of the late twentieth century.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.