(AP) – Women living with HIV gain strength from photographing their experiences.

That’s the conclusion of a study by University of Missouri researcher Michelle Teti and colleagues from the University of Memphis, Kansas City’s Truman Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.

The researchers instructed women in three urban areas to document how having HIV affected their lives. In small group settings, the women discussed the images. They also had opportunities to publicly display their photos.

Teti interviewed the women afterward and learned that taking the pictures seemed to help them appreciate the present, gave them hope and provided motivation.

The National Institutes of Health partially funded the study. The findings were published in the Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care.