Dental Fear

Dental fear, also called odontophobia or dentophobia, is a normal emotional reaction to one or more specific threatening stimuli in a dental setting. Dental anxiety describes a state of apprehension that something dreadful is about to happen in relation to dental treatment, usually coupled with a sense of losing control, while dental phobia denotes a more severe form marked by persistent anxiety toward clearly identifiable dental situations or objects, such as drilling or local anesthetic injections, or toward the dental setting in general. People with dental phobia often avoid the dentist and neglect their oral health as a result, which can lead to painful dental problems that eventually force an emergency visit, itself liable to worsen the phobia in what is sometimes called the cycle of dental fear.