Emotional wellbeing and mental health are important for everyone. Going through difficult times is part of life, but from time to time these can be especially hard to deal with. Furthermore, some people also experience mental health problems, such as depression or anxiety – where emotions such as being in a low mood, feeling helpless or hopeless about the future, experiencing grief – carry on for some time, or return again and again, and start to interfere with quality of life.

Being diagnosed and living with a serious illness like HIV is likely to have a big emotional impact, and people with HIV, as a group, have higher rates of mental health problems than those seen in the general population.

If you are experiencing emotional difficulties or mental health problems, learning to understand and cope with them is an important part of being able to deal with them.