Fear of dental care
Abstract
Background Dental anxiety has been a well-studied phenomenon since the late 1960s. The purpose of this literature review was to compare self-reported levels of dental anxiety during the past 50 years.Methods The authors reviewed more than 200 articles and examined 19 studies involving more than 10,000 adults to assess any trends in dental anxiety. They investigated mean anxiety scores for college students and general adult samples using four measures of dental anxiety. Comparisons were made across publication year and location of study.Results Analyses of variance suggest stability in dental anxiety scores over time and region within both types of study samples. Regardless of assessment length (single item or multi-item), the authors found no significant trends suggesting an increase or decrease in self-reported anxiety levels.Conclusions These results suggest that despite an increase in general anxiety within the United States during the past 50 years, dental anxiety seems to have remained stable throughout the period.Practice implications The authors discuss the stable trend of self-reported dental anxiety levels in the context of increasing general anxiety in the United States and the current structure of individual dental practices.
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Dental fear generally decreases with age.
“Dental fear does, generally, decrease with age [73].”
From Not so terrifying after all? A set of failed replications of the mortality salience effects of Terror Management Theory (2023) · cites this paper as [73]
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“Dental fear does, generally, decrease with age [73].”
Background
- Authors
- SMITH, T. A., & HEATON, L. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Kentucky (US)
- Corresponding author
- SMITH, TIMOTHY A.
- ORCID
- HEATON, LISA J.
- Venue
- The Journal of the American Dental Association
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2003-08
- Volume
- 134
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1101-1108
- ISSN
- 0002-8177 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W20629824
- Cited by
- 165
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 20 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 10
- FWCI
- 1.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Journal of the American Dental Association (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Dentistry › Oral Surgery › Dental Anxiety and Anesthesia Techniques
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Health Sciences › Dentistry › Periodontics › Dental Health and Care Utilization
- Keywords
- dental anxiety, temporal trends, self-reported anxiety, general anxiety, university students
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Analysis of Variance, Child, Humans, Manifest Anxiety Scale, United States, Chi-Square Distribution, Dental Anxiety
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