Jordanian Population's Perception and Understanding of Psoriasis: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background Psoriasis is a chronic immune-mediated disease with a 2-3% prevalence. As with other diseases with cutaneous manifestations, psoriasis patients suffer from psychological issues and social isolation. The general population's misconceptions and prejudicial attitudes toward those patients are highly implicated in ensuing psychological issues. Accordingly, this study is the first to investigate the Jordanian population's knowledge about and attitude toward psoriasis. Methods Our cross-sectional study was conducted using a self-administered online questionnaire that 1,306 participants from the Jordanian population completed. The questionnaire constituted four sections addressing the sociodemographic characteristics, previous exposure to psoriasis, knowledge about psoriasis, and attitudes toward psoriasis. The data analysis was conducted using R and RStudio packages. Results The averages and standard deviations of knowledge and attitude scores of the total sample were 7.54 +/- 2.38 and 3.45 +/- 9.22, respectively. When further classified into categories, 73.81% appeared in the moderate knowledge category. Moreover, 61.49% had a positive total attitude score. Among the common misconceptions identified were thinking that psoriasis is a hereditary disease (30.09%), denying that psoriasis increases the risk of diabetes (51.68%) and heart disease (67.69%), and not knowing that it affects the social life of patients (26.11%). Of the prominent negative attitudes observed were those related to the intimate relationship status and sharing a swimming pool with a psoriasis patient. Conclusions Although the Jordanian population's overall knowledge level appeared sufficient, some critical misconceptions were identified. Moreover, this research revealed a high prevalence of negative attitudes toward psoriasis among the Jordanian public. Future research could link every negative behavior to their exact triggering misconception. This may further assist in the institutional effort to combat discriminatory behaviors.