MEDIA QUESTION CARD TOWARDS KNOWLEDGE OF DENTAL AND ORAL HEALTH IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AGE MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN

Abstract

Background: Dental and oral health is something that must be considered for everyone, including mentally retarded children. Children with mental retardation are children who have intellectual abilities below the average normal child in general. Children with mental retardation have poor oral and dental hygiene by 62.6% and have a low level of knowledge about dental and oral health. One of the efforts to increase knowledge is counseling using question card media. Objective: To analyze the effect of counseling using question card media on dental and oral health knowledge in mentally retarded children of elementary school age at the Yayasan Bahagia Special School, Tasikmalaya City. Methods: The type of research used is a quasi-experimental design with a one-group pre-test and post-test design. sampling using total sampling with a sample of 35 children. The measuring instrument of the study was a questionnaire to measure the knowledge of the oral health of children with mental retardation. Data analysis used the Wilcoxon test on the SPSS program. Results: Before being given counseling using question card media, the most knowledge criteria were 28 children (80%), less criteria, while after being given counseling using question card media it increased to 11 children (31%) good criteria and 24 adequate criteria. children (69%), so that the average value of knowledge of mentally retarded children has increased from 47% to 73%. Wilcoxon test results obtained p-value 0.000 <0.05, it can be concluded that Ha is accepted, it means that there is an effect of dental and oral health education using question card media. Conclusion: There is an effect of dental and oral health counseling using question card media on the dental and oral health knowledge of children with mental retardation of elementary school age at the Yayasan Bahagia Special School, Tasikmalaya City.