[Education about dementia and forgetfulness in daily and weekly press]

In the period March 1990-March 1991 the attention for dementia increased in the Dutch printing press in comparison with the period 1987-1990. Despite this increase, the average number of articles on dementia in daily and weekly news magazines is less than one article per two months. This is extremely little for such an enormous medical and social problem. Furthermore, there is a relative decrease in the number of articles on general aspects of dementia. As expected, the number of articles on research in the field of dementia has increased considerably. In contrast with our hypothesis, it appears that in the printing press there is still hardly attention to memory and normal forgetfulness. In future education programs more explicit information should be given not only about dementia (symptoms, progress, consequences, etc), but also about memory complaints and normal forgetfulness. The printing press could make an important contribution towards achieving these goals. An important condition for this is a better cooperation with experts on the subject.