Link between Oral Health and Psychology

It is established that the mouth can be the gateway to all kinds of health, both good and bad. Heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s all connect to the tissues in the mouth. But did you know psychological well-being and your dental care have a defined relationship? If you feel good about yourself, you probably have more incentive to go to the dentist. You also eat better, which keeps tooth decay low.

Incredibly, oral health can be a major source of anxiety, especially to those for whom going to the dentist was pathologized at an early age. Dentistry has only recently recovered from its nasty stigma as primitive and painful experience. Adults who sat through botched procedures, or even routine ones undergone in their youth before the expansion and modernization of dentistry, repeat horror stories in the presence of children. This can lead to dental phobias later in the lives of those children.

This process is also cyclical in that the more your smile suffers, the worse you feel about yourself. This can further incite feelings of stress and depression. Taking care of your teeth can make you look and feel better. But the clinically depressed often need extreme motivation to make a dental appointment.

If you suffer from mental health issues, you do not have to neglect your oral health. If you have dental phobia, there are many sedation options available to you. Most dental clinics are safe, relaxing environments meant to make even the most frightened patient feel at ease. Getting on a dental schedule can illustrate really quickly the correlation between a healthy mouth and a healthy life.

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