A recent study has revealed that people who are categorized as 'anxious personalities' when it comes to paying the dentist a visit, are more prone to keeping poor oral health, including having teeth which are either missing or rapidly decaying.

Published in the journal Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, the study analyzed anxiety levels of as many as 1037 voluntary subjects aged between 15-32 who had participated in the long running Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, and split them into three groups - those who has been dentally anxious always (stable anxious), those who had developed that anxiety as adolescents (adolescent-onset anxious) and those who developed the said anxiety in adulthood (adult- onset anxious).

Nearly one quarter of the subjects were categorized as 'dentally anxious', i. e., they had been anxious about dentist visits all their lives, and, as a result had very poor oral health. The study, lead by Professor Murray Thomson, revealed that dentally anxious people avoid going to dentists, and as a result end up requiring more painful and longer dental procedures.

"Usually, these people become more and more anxious through a vicious cycle of avoiding the dentist to the point where their dental condition becomes much worse. They then require more unpleasant treatment options such as lancing an abscess, root canal treatment or a tooth extraction", he explained.