Beginning Premise:
Earlier Scandinavian studies indicated existence of a vicious circle of dental anxiety, in which embarrassment, shame or guilt have a central role in facilitating both anxiety and treatment avoidance, but they gave few details as to the exact role of embarrassment in this vicious circle.
Conclusions
Embarrassment is a complex dental anxiety manifestation with qualitative differences by complaint characteristics and perceived intensity. Some cases exhibited manifestations similar to psychiatric criteria for social anxiety disorder as chief complaint, while most manifested embarrassment as a side effect....Sensitivity and understanding about the psychosocial nature of the dental health care environment should be an aim in the education of dentists in the 21st century, in order to prevent and treat suffering from extreme or phobic dental anxiety and related dysfunctional phenomena.
In other words, embarrassment is a real factor in dental anxiety, and the degree of it is greater for some than for others. Duh! But it's still an interesting read. You can read the whole thing here. By the way, I love this chart:
2 comments:
When I was like 7 years old, I was sitting on the dentist chair. When the dentist came in to start working on my teeth, I covered my mouth with my hand. The dentist got very upset and told me to take my hand off my mouth, I shook my head, NO. He said it again and told me he won't work on my mouth till I take my hand off. I just shrugged my shoulders. Than he said, your mom is in the waiting room and I'm going to get her. I just shrugged my shoulders. My mom came in and screamed at me, TAKE YOUR HAND OF YOUR MOUTH!!!!! I nodded my head to NO. The dentist said, than just get off this chair.
I thought FREEDOM FREEDOM!!! and gladly jumped off the chair and ran. I certainly don't know what my punishment entailed, that's all blank in my mind. This happened several years ago.
Now I'm not scared of dentist. My cousin who's a dentist, he and I went to the same dentist and he was as scared of dentists as I was.
But when he became a dentist and I went to see him, I needed laughing gas and earphones for music to ward off the pain I would get from the dentist. I've been seeing my cousin the dentist for several years now and he has made me not afraid of the dentist and now, shots don't hurt and drilling I don't mind, even the sound of the drilling doesn't faze me. After the novacane wears off even if my teeth and mouth still hurt I take pain relievers.
My cousin the dentist is retired.
Now I go to the dental school at the university and have the students work on my teeth. LOL!!!!!
It's exactly this kind of story that I want to hear! And if I have any dentists or dental professionals reading this blog, I do hope they'll take to heart some of the stories, mine and others, that speak of the sources of dental anxiety.
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