AIDS and the school: The role of the school counselor

If statistical projections are accurate, by the year 2000 there will be 10 million children, worldwide, infected with the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS virus (The World Health Organization). This is considered by Dr. Jonathan Mann of Harvard University's International AIDS Center to be a conservative estimate (Signor, 1992). We do know as a fact that by 1991 in the United States there were 3,624 children under the age of 13 who had been diagnosed with AIDS since 1981, and 211,633 adolescents and adults diagnosed during that same period (United States Federal Centers for Disease Control). There are many who believe that counseling with students who have AIDS soon will become the major challenge facing school counselors (Arnzen, 1992). This article will discuss a two-pronged approach for use by school counselors in responding to AIDS in the school setting: a preventive approach through AIDS education, and a model for counseling with students.