International Healthcare Research Journal 2020;4(8):OR1-OR9 INTRODUCTION India has a wide cultural, ethnic, geographical and religious diversity which plays an integral role in shaping the system of individual’s beliefs. Culture is represented by the beliefs, values shared by the people and it has its own influence on a person’s general perspective of things. 1 Unfortunately, false beliefs, i.e., myths were handed down to generations to believe and are still held in high esteems in certain population. 2 The word ‘Myth’ was derived from the Greek word “Mythos”, meaning the stories passed by a group of certain population having a strong impact on seeking general and dental treatment even during illness. 3 According to Merriam Webster online dictionary, Myth is defined as a popular belief or tradition which has grown up around someone or something. 2 Dental myths are very common in India. Generally, one’s actions are preceded by perceptions. Perception is a process, through which an individual becomes aware, conscious and can process, interpret the information regarding the situation. But this is subjective in nature and can differ from person to person based on different factors. Thus, the same information of a particular situation can be processed differently by two different individuals. 4 Factors that leads to the evolution of dental myths are socio-cultural factors, blind traditional beliefs, lack of basic education, lack of awareness and non-scientific knowledge. 5 One’s strong belief in myths can turn a simple problem into a chronic disease that may end upon high financial cost treatment because of the lack of knowledge to treat it at an initial stage. 3 The faith on myths should be eradicated at the bud stage by providing proper education, health care awareness and through advertisements in television, social media and other media outlets etc. The aim of this study was to access the prevalence of dental myths among the present young population to interpret their level of knowledge, awareness and perception. MATERIALS AND METHOD A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted to access the prevalence of various dental-myths Dent-O-Myths Amid Young Community: A Cross-Sectional Study ORIGINAL RESEARCH A B S T R A C T ISSN: 2456-8090 (online) DOI: https://doi.org/10.26440/IHRJ/0408.11367 VINITA MARY A. 1 , KESAVAN R. 2 , KEERTHANA S.* 3 , KIRUTHIGA G. 3 , KOWSALYA M. 3 , POOJA R. 3 INTRODUCTION: The word ‘Myth’ is derived from the Greek word “Mythos”, meaning the stories passed by a group of certain population having a strong impact on seeking general and dental treatment even during illness. AIM: The aim of this study was to access the prevalence of dental myths among the young population and to interpret their level of knowledge, awareness and perception. MATERIALS AND METHOD: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted amongst 500 young population of age between 18-28 years between May to August 2020, COVID-19 pandemic period. A pretested validated questionnaire was formatted on Google forms and circulated in various social media platforms. The collected data was subjected to statistical analysis. RESULTS: The mean age of the study population was 22.66±2.38 years, and 59% were females and 41% were males. About 65% (325) and 56% (280) of the study subjects believed correctly that mouthwash alone will not maintain oral health and chewing gum will not clean their teeth, respectively. When asked about their responses in case of pain in oral cavity, most people 46% (230) reported they would visit a dentist and major segment of study subjects 56% (281) believed that there can be more methods for treating oral pain other than the extraction of the tooth itself. CONCLUSION: The result of this study revealed that the younger population are more aware and didn’t believe much rega rding various dental myths. KEYWORDS: Beliefs, Population, Community QR CODE © Vinita Mary A. et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY-NC 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the use is not commercial and the original author(s) and source are cited. OR1