Denial attitude towards COVID-19 among general population in Saudi Arabia

INTRODUCTION: During the current crisis of COVID 19, recent studies evident that it has a huge impact on public mental health and individuals’ behavior. OBJECTIVES: Our study aimed to estimate the prevalence of high denial attitude towards the emerging pandemic of COVID 19 among the general population of Saudi Arabia. METHODS: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted from April 3, 2020 to May 5, 2020. All participants (N= 1817) were asked to complete an online questionnaire survey that included socio-demographic and other variables, and Denial Attitude Questionnaire towards COVID-19 pandemic (DAQ-COVID-19). RESULTS: High denial attitude was prevalent among 728 (40.1 %) of the participants. It was associated with old age, being married, having low educational level, working in a non-medical professions, do not have a past history of infectious diseases, spending less than one hour following COVID-19 news, satisfied with the government procedures for COVID-19, and highly depressed and anxious respondents, where p-values were 0.001, 0.019, <0.001, 0.027, <0.001, <0.001, 0.004, 0.008, and 0.026; respectively. CONCLUSIONS: About two out of five participants had high denial attitude. To our knowledge, the current study is the first study that tries to evaluate a high denial attitude during the initial COVID 19 outbreaks, especially in Saudi Arabia. However, further exploration in this field is needed. We suggest conducting such a study at the end of the current pandemic or in the second wave of the outbreak