This study seeks to determine the impact of conducting augmented written emotional disclosure (WED) intervention, culturally adapted in the same language as when the trauma was encoded, on the psycho-neuro-immunological response to trauma recall in 36 bilingual Hispanic/Latina women living with HIV. We hypothesize that writing about traumatic experiences in one's primary language concordant with the trauma, i.e., Spanish-WED, will show positive changes in neuropsychological, neuroendocrine, and inflammatory-immune burden. This study will answer the question of whether culturally adapting a trauma intervention previously shown to be effective in HIV+ women enhances positive changes in functional brain activity (primarily in the medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus), stress hormone regulation (primarily glucocorticoids) and inflammatory-immune control in traumatized Hispanic/Latina women with the broader goal of enhancing treatment response and long-term disease outcomes.
