The purpose of this study was to provide the elderly and their family knowledge about senile dementia and to get them to have positive attitude about senile dementia.
The subjects were 204 elderly who lived in the whole country. The data were collected from Sep. to Dec., 1998, using a 36 items questionnaire and analyzed by SAS program for t-test, ANOVA, Scheffe´ test, Pearson Correlation Coefficients.
The results were as follows:
1. The mean score of knowledge about senile dementia was 9.33±2.68(range 0-15).
The elderly who was unschooled, lived in Kyung Sang province, didn´t have any hobby or interest, didn´t access to informations about senile dementia got lower score than the others.
2. The examples of knowledge test items about senile dementia that the subjects above fifty percents answered uncorrectly were ´the patient of senile dementia doesn´t die soon´, ´senile dementia is uncurable disease´, ´the symptoms of senile dementia is apparent in new and strange circumstances´, ´the pood and lonely elderly is apt to have senile dementia´.
3. The mean score of attitude about senile dementia was 15.87±2.25(range 0-20) and attitude about senile dementia was relatively positive. Attitude about senile dementia by general characteristic was not significantly different.
4. The examples of attitude test items about senile dementia to which the majority of subjects agreed were ´It is a pity to see the patient suffered from senile dementia´, ´It is difficult to take care of senile dementia patient´ and so on.
5. The correlation between knowledge and attitude about senile dementia was very low.
Therefore this study suggests that it is crucial to educate the elderly and their family to induce positive attitude about senile dementia.
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