Research progress on psychotherapy for dental anxiety

Abstract

Dental anxiety refers to the unique tension, worry and even fear of dental treatment, which may lead to patients refusing to receive treatment and missing the best time for treatment. With the development of bio-psycho-social medical models, psychotherapy has gradually become the optimal treatment for dental anxiety. This article reviewed the etiology, evaluation and psychotherapy of dental anxiety. Research has shown that uncomfortable dental treatment experience is the main cause of dental anxiety, which is commonly assessed using questionnaires in clinical practice. Psychotherapy for dental anxiety is a noninvasive, widely applicable treatment without side effects, mainly including improving the treatment environment and service attitude, behavior therapy, and cognitive therapy, which has been shown to effectively alleviate dental anxiety in patients. However, psychotherapy for dental anxiety is highly demanding for dentists, which hinders its promotion and application. At the same time, the psychotherapeutic mechanism of dental anxiety is not clear and remains to be further elucidated by large-scale and high-quality randomized controlled studies.

Keywords

• dental anxiety
• psychotherapy
• bio-psycho-social medical model
• dental anxiety scale
• oral health
• behavioral therapy
• cognitive therapy
• treatment environment
• systematic desensitization therapy
• biofeedback therapy