Dental Anxiety Case Study

CHAPTER 1

The Problem and Its Background

Introduction

In dentistry, anxiety is categorized into two: dental phobia and dental anxiety. A person with dental phobia tends to avoid treatment maybe because of unpleasant experience in the past. Dental anxiety relates to the psychological and physiological variations of a non-pathological fear response to a dentist’s appointment or treatment. Individuals who cancels, avoids, or postpones dental visits are the anxious patients (Bhola and Malhotra, 2014).It is a major dilemma in pediatric dental practice and it exists in a considerable proportion of children and adolescents. According to the study of Gao et al (2013), about 6-15% of the world's adult population avoids dental care due to dental anxiety

Fear in the dental environment might also a result of what ideas about dental treatment was taught on a child. There are situations that relatives used the scariest scene on a dental environment to make the child follow directions such as they should brush their teeth in order not to see a dentist for tooth extraction. Tooth extraction is always introduced as painful experience because of the needle infiltration part. Child’s negative responses such crying, tantrums, and refusal to treatment can cause cancellation and postponement of the following dental visits. Anxiety or fearfulness affects a child’s behavior. To a large extent, it determines the success of a dental appointment. Negative response on the stimuli of pain, pressure, and fear on a dental environment can change into a positive response of cooperation and willingness to be treated when the anxiety of the child will be managed through different strategies. Over the years, anxiety management has meant different things to different people. Anxiety management is the means by which the dental health team effectively and efficiently performs treatment for a child and, at the same time, instills a positive dental