Negative events and their potential risk of precipitating pathological forms of dental anxiety

The purpose of the present study was to assess which types of experiences are most closely associated with pathological forms of dental anxiety. Data came from a sample of dental patients (n = 1462). Pathological dental anxiety was operationalized in two ways: (1) a score of ≥36 on the Short form of the Dental Anxiety Inventory (S-DAI; high dental anxiety, HDA), or (2) fulfilling the screening criteria of specific phobia (DSM-IV-TR; dental phobia, DP). A wide variety of dental experiences appeared to be significantly related with both HDA and DP, while general traumatic experiences were not. No differences were found between women and men. Retrospective accounts of dental experiences involving helplessness were most strongly associated with having HDA [OR = 8.2] and positive screens of DP [OR = 16.2]. The results suggest that disruptive emotional and interoceptive reactions during dental treatment (particularly helplessness) have the greatest potential risk of precipitating pathological forms of dental anxiety

What are people afraid of during dental treatment? Anxiety-provoking capacity of 67 stimuli characteristic of the dental setting

Relatively little is known about the anxiety-provoking capacity of the various objects and situations characteristic of the dental setting. The aims of the current study were to establish a hierarchy of anxiety-provoking capacities of a large set of dental stimuli and to determine the differences in relation to gender, age, ethnicity, and level of dental trait anxiety. An additional aim was to derive an estimate of the number of stimuli to be presented to anxious patients in order to obtain full coverage of their dental fears. A questionnaire describing 67 potentially anxiety-provoking stimuli was constructed and presented to 960 adults. The results indicated that invasive stimuli (e.g. surgical procedures) were rated as the most anxiety provoking and that non-invasive stimuli (e.g. the dentist as a person) were the least anxiety provoking. The fear-evoking capacity of the dental stimuli varied with gender, age, ethnicity, and level of dental trait anxiety, whereas the rank order of these stimuli appeared to be independent of these factors. Furthermore, it appeared that the top 25 most anxiety-provoking objects and situations found in the current study contained only eight (28%) stimuli, which had been taken into account in previous research. The present findings support the need for assessment procedures using a broad spectrum of potentially anxiety-provoking stimuli

Negative events and their potential risk of precipitating pathological forms of dental anxiety

The purpose of the present study was to assess which types of experiences are most closely associated with pathological forms of dental anxiety. Data came from a sample of dental patients (n = 1462). Pathological dental anxiety was operationalized in two ways: (1) a score of ≥36 on the Short form of the Dental Anxiety Inventory (S-DAI; high dental anxiety, HDA), or (2) fulfilling the screening criteria of specific phobia (DSM-IV-TR; dental phobia, DP). A wide variety of dental experiences appeared to be significantly related with both HDA and DP, while general traumatic experiences were not. No differences were found between women and men. Retrospective accounts of dental experiences involving helplessness were most strongly associated with having HDA [OR = 8.2] and positive screens of DP [OR = 16.2]. The results suggest that disruptive emotional and interoceptive reactions during dental treatment (particularly helplessness) have the greatest potential risk of precipitating pathological forms of dental anxiety