No one likes going to the dentist, but for those who suffer dental phobias a trip to the dentist's office is more than just unpleasant, It is a dreaded intolerable appointment. Some patients are so terrified that they can't even come into the building.
Although some patients' phobias are rooted in deep trauma, most dental phobics can trace their fears to bad experiences in the dentist's chair, usually during childhood. For people who were held into a dentist's chair as children, or ignored when they were experiencing pain, every visit to the dentist is a return to that sense of helplessness and terror.
Dental phobia is a severe fear of the dentist that over time causes loss of teeth because of the patient's inability to go to the dentist and receive regular care. The heart of the matter is that dental phobia can rob patients of their self-esteem as they become embarrassed about the appearance of their teeth and withdraw from friends, coworkers and loved ones.
Ambling along an innocent-looking road, you pass a sign for a dental surgery. Immediately, your heart starts racing, you can feel the heat rising to your face, and you become shaky and nauseous. Argggh, not yet another reminder of the dreaded D-word - better cross that road and face the other way! Is that you? You may be one of the many people who suffer with dental phobia!
A "phobia" is traditionally defined as "an irrational severe fear that leads to avoidance of the feared situation, object or activity" (even though the Greek word "phobia" simply means fear...). Exposure to the feared stimulus provokes an immediate anxiety response, which may take the form of a panic attack. The phobia causes a lot of distress, and impacts on other aspects of the individual's life, not just their oral health. Dental phobics will spend an awful lot of time thinking about their teeth or dentists or dental situations, or else spend a lot of time trying NOT to think of teeth or dentists or dental situations. Which is pretty hard in today's society, which is saturated with ugly reminders such as toothpaste commercials.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) describes dental phobia as a "marked and persistent fear that is excessive or unreasonable". It also assumes that the person recognizes that the fear is excessive or unreasonable. Conclusion? The DSM-IV criteria were obviously not decided upon by a representative group of dental phobics (read on to see why). Having said that, there is a new revised version coming out soon, so maybe the definition will have changed. You might be interested to learn that DSM-IV's predecessor, DSM-III, defined homosexuality as a mental disorder... I'd hazard a guess that most dental phobics would object to being labelled as suffering from a mental disorder.
This is not to say that dental phobia cannot co-occur with psychiatric disorder - of course it can. Dental phobia appears to be more common in people who suffer from another psychiatric disorder, notably Generalized Anxiety Disorder, agoraphobia, depression, and emetophobia. Research suggests that about 20% of dental phobics have a concurrent psychiatric disorder. The main problem in defining "dental phobia" is that there isn't just ONE type of dental phobia, but many types - some rational, and some which seem more "irrational".
Bracha and others (2006, HI Dental Journal) have suggested that the term dental phobia is typically a misnomer, for much the same reasons I'm outlining here
Whether the fear is "unreasonable", "excessive", or "irrational" is debatable... certainly not if you end up in the hands of the wrong dentist! Which, incidentally, is one of the reasons why people end up as dental phobics in the first place...
More Information:
Plastic Surgery Before And AfterFacial Cream
No comments:
Post a Comment