Dementia Knowledge and Public Stigma Among Vietnamese Adults in Metropolitan Areas and Their Associated Individual and Contextual Factors

Abstract

Objectives

This study aims to explore dementia knowledge and public stigma toward people with dementia (PWD) upheld by Vietnamese adults in their regular metropolitan sociocultural contexts, and their individual and contextual associated factors.

Methods

A total of 720 adult participants, aged from 18 to 59, 43.47% of them resided in Northern Vietnam (Hanoi), and 56.53% in Southern Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh city) completed a face-to-face interview with research assistants using a printed survey. They were asked to openly report their language use of local terms and illness labels to address two typical dementia symptom scenarios. Their open-responses were noted verbatim for being coded and grouped into categories of folk and biomedical terms. They also completed other standard measures of dementia knowledge and public stigma toward PWD.

Results

Participants reported a moderate level of standard dementia knowledge, while combining the folk and biomedical belief models with preference given to the folk beliefs in approaching dementia. Multivariate regression analyses show that education was significantly associated with dementia knowledge, both as a standard scale and open, subjective measures, and dementia stigma. Other individual factors, including anxiety about aging, age, income, exposure to dementia, as well as the contextual factor of region showed their role in predicting dementia knowledge and stigma.

Discussion

Results call for future studies with more contextual factors, such as regional sub-cultures, cultural beliefs, and health policy, and imply the need for culturally tailored dementia educational program for groups of publics with diverse backgrounds, as well as advocacy campaigns of positive aging to ease destructive anxiety about aging and increase the willingness to learn about dementia.