The Effectiveness of a Relaxation Technique on the Quality of Life and Symptoms in People Living With HIV

The PROQOL-HIV questionnaire is composed of 43 Likert-type items (5-point scale ranging from 0=never to 4=always), including 39 items targeting 8 domains of HRQL and general health: physical health and symptoms (9 items), treatment impact (10 items), emotional distress (4 items), health concerns (4 items), body change (4 items), intimate relationships (3 items), social relationships (2 items), and stigma (2 items). Four extra items dealing with religious beliefs, finance, having children, and satisfaction with care are not part of the scoring scheme, but are used to gather additional information from the respondent. Responses to items will be totaled for each dimension and standardized on a scale from 0 to 100 points, in which higher values indicate a better health state.

Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) is a self-report questionnaire that assesses sleep quality and quantity. The19-item self-report questionnaire yields 7 component scores: subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, duration, habitual sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, use of sleeping medication, and daytime dysfunction each weighted equally on a 0-3 scale. The seven component scores are then summed to yield a global PSQI score, which has a range of 0-21; higher scores indicate worse sleep quality.

Fatigue severity scale (FSS) is a 9-items instrument with seven items related to fatigue interference, one item related to the experience of fatigue itself and one item about what causes fatigue. Each item is scored on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (''strongly disagree'') to 7 (''strongly agree''). The mean score of the 9 items is used to estimate fatigue severity.

Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) is a two-factor instrument that measures pain severity and pain interference. The pain severity factor has four items, all rated on a 0 ''No pain'' to 10 ''Pain as bad as you can imagine'' Likert scale. The pain interference factor has seven items, all rated on a 0 ''Does not interfere'' to 10 ''Interferes completely'' Likert scale. Arithmetic mean of the four severity items can be used as measures of pain severity; the arithmetic mean of the seven interference items can be used as a measure of pain interference

State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) is a 40-items instrument that measures state anxiety and trait anxiety. Each type of anxiety has its own scale of 20 different questions that are scored on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 "Almost never" to 4 "Almost always". Scores range from 20 to 80, with higher scores correlating with greater anxiety.

Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) is a 9-item instrument that measure depressive symptoms severity. PhQ-9 score ranges from 0 to 27, because each of the 9 items can be scores from 0 "not at all" to 3 "nearly every day". Higher scores indicate higher severity.