Last update:
15-Jan-2020

OBJECTIVE To investigate dental phobia and its relationship with socio-demographic factors, dental history and other mental disorders and symptoms of psychological distress, in order to identify patients who are particularly vulnerable.

METHOD The sample consisted of 164 dental patients who had a scheduled appointment with the dentist or were examined as urgent cases in an outpatient hospital facility in Thessaloniki. They completed questionnaires, including the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale, the Brief Standard Self-Rating for Phobic Patients and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised, and answered questions concerning socio-demographic characteristics, dental history and psychiatric history. Statistical analysis was conducted with the use of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), v. 20.

RESULTS Of the respondents, 7.9% were classified as dental phobic, while 14.6% had a high level of anxiety during the dental examination. The experience of particularly painful dental experiences in the past (p=0.01), and female gender (p=0.003), were found to be significantly associated with dental phobia. Participants with children tended to have less pre-screening anxiety than childless participants (p=0.008). Ordinal regression analysis showed that individuals with painful dental experiences in the past were 261% more likely to present dental phobia. Men were 68% less likely to have dental phobia than women, people who visited the dentist regularly were 43% less likely and those without blood/injury phobia were 88% less likely to present dental phobia.

CONCLUSIONS Female gender, previous painful dental experiences, blood/injury phobia and irregular visits to the dentist appeared to be the main factors associated with dental phobia. Cooperation between dentists and mental health professionals is of great importance, especially in the case of patients with psychological co-morbidity.

Key words: Co-morbidity, Dental phobia, Mental disorders, Phobic disorders.