Few empirical studies have evaluated the mediating effects of quality of life (QoL) among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). The purposes of this study were to identify the predictors of QoL and to test the mediating effects of social support on depression and QoL among patients enrolled in an HIV case-management program in Taiwan. A cross-sectional, descriptive correlation design collected data from 108 HIV-infected individuals. Individuals were assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory II, the short version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment (WHOQOL-BREF), and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support between September 2007 and April 2010. After adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics (including age, gender, and mode of transmission) and clinical information (including CD4 count and time since diagnosis with HIV), the study findings showed that QoL was significantly and positively correlated with both social support and the initiation of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), and was negatively correlated with depression and time since diagnosis with HIV. The strongest predictors for QoL were depression followed by the initiation of HAART and social support, with an R² of 0.40. Social support partially mediated the relationship between depression and QoL. Health professionals should enhance HIV-infected individuals' social support to alleviate the level of depression and further increase the QoL among PLWHA.

This article describes the recovery experiences of women who had suffered intimate partner violence in Taiwan. A phenomenological study design using semi-structured interviews was used to obtain data from a purposive sample of eight women. Colaizzi’s approach to narrative analysis was applied. Findings indicate that “reconstructing the self” emerged as the essence of the women’s recovery experiences. Four themes were identified: Feeling shame, creating mastery, recognizing the imperfect self, and embodying the self by helping others. Understanding the recovery experience is an important step in effectively assisting women to recover from abusive relationships and to reconstruct their lives.

Non-adherence to medication among patients with schizophrenia is an important clinical issue with very complex reasons. Since medication administration is an essential nursing responsibility, improving strategies for patient medication compliance must be fully understood. This study aimed to explore the strategies mental health nurses (MHNs) implement in clinically improving patients with schizophrenia and to describe the nurses’ tacit knowledge of application strategies. A qualitative study with purposeful sampling was used. Twenty-five experienced MHNs in a psychiatric hospital in central Taiwan were given an in-depth interview. The texts were content-analyzed using NVivo 12 Pro software. MHNs promote medication adherence among patients with schizophrenia using the following strategies: establishing a conversational relationship, overall assessment of non-adherence to medication, understanding the disease and adjusting the concept of medication, incorporating interpersonal connection feedback, and building supportive resources. This study explored the strategies of MHNs that incorporated knowledge in managing treatment adherence in patients with schizophrenia. The findings add knowledge to clinical nursing practice about medication adherence among patients with schizophrenia.

Dating violence (DV) is a major public health problem among youth. The majority of DV studies in Taiwan involve the assessment of DV without the use of a robust psychological framework to guide research accuracy. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to utilize the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to assess intention and other salient factors related to DV among university students. A two-phase, mixed-method design study was conducted among university students from seven universities in Taiwan, aged 18 to 24 years. In Phase I, questionnaires used were specifically developed based on the TPB, consisting of both direct and indirect measures related to DV. In Phase Ⅱ, questionnaire evaluation and related factors were examined through a two-step process of structural equation modelling (SEM) to test the TPB model. The results of this study found that perceived behavioral control, subjective norm, and attitude toward DV on behavioral intention accounting for 37.5% of the total variance. Among the related factors, attitude toward the behavior was the strongest (β = 0.48, p < 0.001), followed by perceived behavioral control (β = 0.19, p < 0.05). Findings from this study could expand the knowledge base in this important area and might help prevent DV.