SUBJECTIVE FORGETFULNESS IN A NORMAL DUTCH POPULATION - POSSIBILITIESFOR HEALTH-EDUCATION AND OTHER INTERVENTIONS

Many, especially elderly people, are worried about their diminishing m emory. In order to be able to improve health education activities abou t forgetfulness and aging processes, nearly 2000 healthy Dutch people, aged 25-85 years, participated in a postal survey into the determinan ts of subjective forgetfulness. As expected, there was a systematic in crease in the prevalence of forgetfulness with age. The relatively hig h prevalence of forgetfulness in the young (29%) and middle-aged group s (34%) was unexpected. Besides age, the occurrence of dementia in a c lose relative appeared to be a strong predictor of people's subjective forgetfulness. Furthermore, people who felt more in control of their memory functioning reported less forgetfulness. Younger people ascribe d their forgetfulness mostly to external causes (stress, concentration ) and older people to internal causes (age, retardation). Eleven perce nt of all forgetful people were interested in an intervention for thei r memory complaints. In this group, education (37%), memory training ( 29%), and medication (12%) were the preferred interventions. No differ ences were found between older and younger respondents. (C) 1998 Elsev ier Science Ireland Ltd.