Dental visits and personality traits among young adults.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the relationship between dental behavior, dental anxiety, and personality attachment traits among a healthy young adult population.


METHODS
The study population consisted of 450 young adults (18 to 19 years old) who arrived for dental screening before military service. The survey was based on a questionnaire about dental behavior (ie, dental treatments and follow-up frequency, last dental visit, etc) as well as the Corah Dental Anxiety Scale (DAS) questionnaire, and the Self-Report Measurement of Adult Attachment (SRAA) questionnaire used to rate 3 adult attachment styles (secure, anxious, and avoidant).


RESULTS
The questionnaire was completed by 429 participants (95.3% response rate), in which 131 (30.5%) reported regular visits to their dental clinician and 61 (14.2%) did not visit a dental clinic at all. A total of 287 participants (66.9%) reported their last dental visit to be during the previous 2 years before the study, and 49 (11.4%) reported no visit to a dental office during the previous 5 years. DAS score ranged from 4 to 20 (mean 8.5 +/- 3.3). High levels of dental anxiety, as indicated by DAS scores, correlated with less frequent dental visits, as well as with no visit to a dental clinic over the past few years. Participants who scored high on avoidant attachment were more likely to report occasional or no dental visits (P = .03). High DAS scores were more frequent among anxiously attached persons (P <.001) and among participants who scored high on attachment avoidance (P = .0013).


CONCLUSIONS
Physiologic factors could have an impact on the patient's response. Patients, particularly anxious and avoidant attached ones, tend to visit the dental clinic less frequently.
Levin
Liran
L
Department of Oral Rehabilitation, The Maurice and Gabriela Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel. liranl@post.tau.ac.il <liranl@post.tau.ac.il>
Proter
Noam E
NE
Levin
Sagit
S
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D016854:Dental Anxiety; D003729:Dental Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003812:Dentist-Patient Relations; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008347:Manifest Anxiety Scale; D010551:Personality; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires