Level of Awareness and Attitude Toward Cerebral Palsy Among Parents in Al-Baha City, Saudi Arabia.

ABSTRACT

Background Cerebral palsy (CP) is a chronic disorder of motion, posture, and tone which occurs due to brain insult during the period of brain growth. It is a disabling disorder in both motor and intellectual aspects. Fortunately, CP is a manageable disease that can be managed in part by increasing the knowledge and understanding of the parents. Methodology This cross-sectional, prospective, community-based study aimed to assess the level of parents' knowledge and their attitude toward CP using an electronic questionnaire. The parents' knowledge was classified as good or poor based on an adopted scoring system. The parents' attitude was categorized as positive or negative. Results Our study results showed that good knowledge (those with a score more than 60% of the total score) was noted in 275 (61.1%) participants, whereas 175 of the participants had poor knowledge (38.9%), especially regarding awareness of the diagnosis of CP. Conclusions Most participants had an overall good knowledge of CP although they had insufficient knowledge of some aspects of the disease such as causes, disease course, clinical presentations, diagnosis, and prognosis. Although the results showed a positive attitude concerning playing with a child with CP, unfortunately, there was a negative attitude toward hiring a CP patient and a strongly negative attitude toward marrying a patient with CP.