International Journal of Pharmacology (IJP) is published by IMR Press from Volume 21 Issue 4 (2025). Previous articles were published by another publisher under the CC-BY licence, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement.
Community’s Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Toward Dementia in Qassim Region, Saudi Arabia
Background and Objective: Dementia is not a disease by itself. It is general term that describes a wide range of symptoms linked with thinking skills and memory decline which might affect the patient’s ability to complete everyday activities. This study aims to identify the Saudi community awareness and attitude toward dementia in Qassim Region, Saudi Arabia. Materials and Methods: A diverse group of 401 participants, in term of gender, age group and education level. A questionnaire was distributed to assess knowledge, attitude and practice. The effect of demographics on dementia awareness was assessed. Questionnaire was randomly distributed to 401 participants. Categorical variables were described by frequencies and percentages. The Chi-square test was used to test the significance of the association between categorical variables. Results: Mild dementia case was identified by 53.9% of participants. As 240 (59.9%) of participants think that dementia is part of aging process. Over one third of the participants (39.7%) agreed that patients should head to neurology specialist when showing memory impairment symptoms. Rendering to age group, there was a significant difference among the groups (p<0.01). Participants older than 65 agreed that dementia is part of aging process. While those between 18 and 29 years old disagreed with that. Conclusion: The overall attitude of the Saudi Society was highly acceptable. Low identification to the early stage of dementia was noticed. Furthermore, the area-specific study should be done to specify this pilot study.

