Dementia knowledge levels among adolescents in England

Raising awareness of dementia in the general public is a key dementia policy. Adolescents are one population whose levels of dementia knowledge we have little understanding about. In this cross-sectional survey study, we aimed to capture the level of dementia knowledge in adolescents from different socio-demographic groups and to explore the factors associated with adolescents' dementia knowledge.

We recruited 1,371 adolescents aged 11-18 years across England. Adoeslescents were asked to complete a survey that included dementia knowledge items from the The Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey. Descriptive statistics, a logistic regression, and cross-tabulations were used to explore adolescents' level of dementia knowledge in various demographic groups (e.g. ethnicity, religion, sex, age).

Adolescents were able to answer just under half the knowledge items correctly (mean = 48%). Only 30% (n = 411) of participants correctly identified that dementia is not a mental illness and just over half of the adolescents (53%, n = 725) thought that dementia is not a normal part of ageing. While we observed some demographic differences, the level of knowledge across various groups did not significantly differ (p-values > .05).

Overall, the presence of widespread misconceptions among adolescents, combined with the lack of demographic variation, indicates that universal dementia education and awareness campaigns may be required to effectively address these misunderstandings.