Forget Me Not Project -- Research on Dementia
Noting Alzheimer’s Disease Association’s (ADA) mission of assessing the stigma level attached to persons who have dementia, the faculty instructor created an original survey based on dementia research and surveys. The survey was to reach across Singapore to survey four groups – those with dementia, primary caregivers, secondary caregivers and public with no connection to dementia, with more than 133 survey questions. All 99 students then organised themselves in groups and invested more than three months of intense work in the study, survey and analysis, gathering a total of 5,679 respondents in five weeks. Students collected data and evaluated variables covering the relationships between the Dementia Stigma Index (DSI) and gender, education, race. The DSI measures an individual’s level of openness, on a scale from 0 to 100, with 0: holding the least stigma and 100: having the worst stigma.
This study was Singapore’s first-ever national survey on dementia, and was featured by the local media, in a nationwide Dementia Awareness Campaign, and published in ADA’s magazine. The findings were also shared with London School of Economics, as part of Alzheimer Disease International worldwide survey. The news article of the SMU-X project done with ADA can be found here.
Key findings include:
- Persons with Dementia: 72% of persons with dementia feel rejection and loneliness while 50% of them feel that they cannot be open with others regarding their condition. More than 56% of them say that people treat them as less competent.
- General Public: 56% of the general public rate themselves low in dementia knowledge, and more than 54% feel uncomfortable interacting with persons with dementia
- Almost 80% of all respondents (or 8 in 10) say that they want to do more to improve the lives of people living with dementia
- 70% of all respondents (or 7 in 10) agree that persons living with dementia should live “with family in their home” and agree that Singapore needs to provide more dementia-friendly amenities.
Mr Jason Foo, ADA’s Chief Executive Officer, commented, “The media coverage and public interest that the SMU-X project garnered is among the highest that ADA has ever recorded and we believe that it has helped increase public awareness of dementia and helped reduce the stigma faced by persons with dementia and their caregivers. In the process, we also believe Rosie has raised the understanding of dementia among the SMU students and staff as a whole and made them more aware of the challenges faced by some of their parents and grandparents.”
Daryl Loy, a 23-year-old undergraduate from SMU’s School of Law, said: “It’s never a dull day in my statistics classes where lessons are filled with real-life examples from every aspect of life. Remember.For.Me. was a perfect complement in allowing us to bring what we had learnt in class to practice. It provided us a thorough understanding of how Singaporeans felt about dementia and placed an otherwise theoretical subject of statistics, into its larger societal context. Data collection was a particularly meaningful experience, as each survey response brought about also genuine conversations about the state of dementia in Singapore.”
Claudia Si Tho, a 20-year-old undergraduate from SMU’s School of Social Sciences commented: “Remember.For.Me. has been the most interesting and fulfilling project I have ever worked on. Prior to this, statistics just been like any other subject that I had to complete, but this project opened my eyes to a whole new world. I saw how statistics can come alive and impact our society positively. Through Remember.For.Me, I have hope for Singapore to progress towards being a dementia-inclusive society. I look forward to the changes in attitude and action that our project findings can hopefully help to bring about.”