According to a recent survey conducted by the British Dental Association
, 25% of people are scared of dentists. There may be a number of reasons for this. Fear of the pain that a particular dental treatment may cause is the obvious fear. However, there are sometimes even more extreme cases where any reminder of the dentist or dental treatment sends the person into a blind panic.
Unfortunately for those people who have a fear of the dentist, there is a time in everybody's life when it is absolutely necessary to go to the dentist. For those people who have a fear of the dentist this can be an absolute nightmare. A lot of the time this problem is made worse by the fact that these people find it impossible to even speak to a dentist about it. Dentist Edinburgh, The Polwarth Group, say that these people need specialist care: "These people need a lot more attention than the average dentist can give."
There are special techniques that need to be used in these cases. Firstly it is very important that the staff listen to the patient and empathise with their fears. You also have to have real patience and spend time with the patient which helps to enable slow but steady progress.
It is also important to break down barriers. For example if someone is scared of heights, the generally accepted treatment is to expose the person the heights until they gradually get used to them and can deal with them. It works in the same way with dental phobia. The patient needs to be exposed to dentists and treatments until the psychological barrier is brought down.
The patient needs to be given targets. Little targets met every week will ultimately lead to a gradual attitude change. In very rare cases and as a last resort sedation may have to be used. For most people, however, this will not be necessary and the phobia can be beaten. With a little bit of effort from the patient and a lot of understanding from the dentist, dental fear can be overcome.