Dental Anxiety

Have you been delaying your visit to the dentist even though the pain in your tooth is becoming unbearable just because you fear the syringes, drills, and every other intimidating dental instrument?

Well, you’re not alone! According to research around 62% of teens in UK feel the same way.

This fear of visiting the dentist has been given the fancy name “Dental Anxiety” by healthcare professionals. Simply put, Dental anxiety is the fear or stress caused by the Dentist or the Dental setting.

Another commonly heard term, but far more severe is “Dental Phobia” which leads to irrational fear & severe anxiety which makes phobic people completely and totally avoid visits to Dentists.

What causes this Anxiety?

There are many causes people fear dental visits, more common being

• Fear of Drills

• Fear of Injections

• Fear of post-op side effects e.g Fat numb lip

• Fear of instruments

But what if it’s not the dental setup, but actually the dentist that has inflicted this fear upon the patient due to a traumatic experience?

Research actually supports this thought as 71% of people questioned had a previous painful experience, 23% had experiences that were frightening & 9% reported a past experience as embarrassing.

Dental Anxiety can be aggravated if the patient is already suffering from

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder

• Depression

• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

How to know if you have Dental Anxiety?

Have you had a dental appointment the next day and couldn’t sleep at the thought of it or maybe you felt like crying when one of your parents forcibly fixed a check-up with the dentist?

If you did finally make it to the dental chair but feel like sweating it off, or maybe your heart starts racing and you feel everything becoming flashy, or maybe you want to run away while you can?

These all are, I’m afraid, signs of dental anxiety.

Will Anxiety affect your oral health?

Anxiety makes you delay and even avoid visits to the Dentist. Delaying your visit can worsen your oral health as the disease might progress from one that is preventable to one that which might require complicated and expensive treatment.

This in turn leads to even more anxiety, which creates a vicious cycle of Dental anxiety.

Anxiety leads to Avoiding Dentist resulting in Worsening Disease that needs Expensive treatment causing More Anxiety

How to manage Dental Anxiety?

The first and most important way to manage dental anxiety is to talk about it to your dentist. Most of them are trained to deal with this common situation but only if you communicate about it to them, can they take extra precautionary measures. They will counsel you & guide you about the procedures.

You and your dentist can create a signal e.g. a thumbs down to tell to your dentist that you feel anxious. Other measures that dentist can take to reduce your anxiety are:

• Early morning appointment to reduce waiting time

• Prescribe you an Anxiolytic

• Prescribe you a sedative agent to help you sleep the night before

• Run relaxing background music

• Engage you in distracting conversation

• Keep instruments away from your sight

• Use profound local anaesthesia

• Use conscious sedation

• Use nitrous oxide (happy gas)

Apart from measures taken by the dentist an individual can perform relaxation techniques to ease their anxiety. These include Deep breathing which has a calming effect on the sympathetic nervous system. Meditation is also an important calming activity that can really help calm your nerves & make the dental work bearable.

Now that you know the symptoms of Dental Anxiety and how it really is manageable by various simple methods, you can finally help yourself and go to that “now not so dreadful” dental appointment, and make your smile brighter and healthier than ever before.

Wishing you a healthy oral cavity and a brighter smile.