AWARENESS, KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEFS ABOUT VITILIGO AMONG FEMALE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN ABHA CITY, SAUDI ARABIA

Areej Saeed Alshahrani and *Razan Saeed Alamar

ABSTRACT

Background: The social acceptance of people with vitiligo is largely dependent on perceptions of this disease in a given population and often represents a considerable problem for patients and their families. Objectives: To explore the awareness, attitude and misconceptions about vitiligo among female students in King Khalid University, Abha. Subjects and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among students at female colleges in Alsamer center belonging to King Khalid University in Abh. Two-stage random sampling technique was adopted. In the first stage, two colleges were randomly selected through a simple random technique (pharmacy and computer sciences). In the second stage, within each one of the selected college, the sample was equally distributed between the academic years. A simple Arabic self-administered validated questionnaire was utilized for data collection. Results: The study included 337 female University students out of 375 invited to participate in the study (89.9%). Their age ranged between 18 and 29 years with a mean of 21.6 years and standard deviation of 2.1 years. Majority of the students (96.1%) heard well about vitiligo. Friends was the commonest reported source of information regarding vitiligo among them (50.3%) whereas internet, TV and newspapers/magazines were reported by 40.7%, 34.3% and 25.3% of the participants, respectively. Overall knowledge about vitiligo among participants was sufficient among 41.8% of them. None of the studied socio-demographic factors was significantly associated with vitiligo knowledge among female University students although the sufficient knowledge was higher among students of pharmacy, those of higher academic levels, older, married, whose mothers were employees and their fathers were teachers. Majority of them (78%) will accept employment of a vitiligo patient and accepted being served by a vitiligo patient (75.1%) whereas a considerable percentage of the participants (40.9%) will not accept marriage from a vitiligo patient. There was a positive significant association between knowledge and attitude scores (r=0.41, p=0.029). Conclusion: A considerable percentage of female university students in Abha had common negative attitudes and misunderstandings about vitiligo. Therefore, educating the young females about vitiligo could lead to increased self-confidence, better social integration, and psychological well-being for vitiligo patients.

Keywords: Vitiligo; Awareness; Knowledge; Attitude; Females; University students; Saudi Arabia.