Be Honest – How Nervous Are You about Going to the Dentist?
Thu, May 5, 2011 at 02:00AM The British Dental Health Foundation published a survey in 2009 that found, amongst other dental matters, that half of all adults – but especially women – have moderate or extreme anxiety about going to the dentist. As a follow-up to this, the UK National Smile Month Survey of 2011 covered ‘Nervousness’, and produced some disturbing results – for dentists. It seems that one in five people rated visiting their dentist as the thing that made them most nervous.
The survey went to over 1,000 people; it asked them to put in order the things that made them most nervous from a list that included: visit to the dentist, visit to the doctor, going to hospital, injections, heights, flying, spiders, and snakes.
The results were surprising. First place – top fear – was fear of heights. In second place came a visit to the dentist. Then came, in order: going to hospital, snakes, spiders, injections, seeing the doctor, and flying. Further analysis showed that nearly 10 times as many people (22% of the sample) were made most nervous by their dentist compared to their doctor (only 2%). With regard to dentist visits, 30% of the sample said that having a tooth drilled made them very or extremely nervous, and 28% felt the same about having a local anesthetic injection.
The head of the Dental Health Foundation admits that the survey results show that dentists have a lot of work to do to build public confidence. He hopes that National Smile Month campaign, starting in May, will help ally anxieties. Proper teeth care is an important factor in reducing cardiovascular mortality – and erectile dysfunction. And pity the poor dentist. Throughout his career, he has to reassure us that “it’s not going to hurt” when both of us know that it probably will – if only for a few seconds . . .
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