Anxiety in patients and its relation with patients’ psychospiritual behaviors

BACKGROUND an‎d AIM: The goal of this research was to study the rate of anxiety due to dental procedures in patients referring to dental clinics in Kerman, Iran, according to Corah’s Dental Anxiety Scale (DAS) and its relation with psychospiritual behaviors. METHODS: The study participants were selected from among those referring to dental offices, dental university, and city clinics and sampling was performed using simple sampling (405 individuals). The collected data were analyzed using χ2 test and t-test in SPSS software. Multivariate regression was also used in order to study the relation between anxiety rate and psychospiritual disorders. RESULTS: The study was performed on 198 men and 207 women with an average age of 38.5 ± 4.2 years. Women, young men, and people with higher educational degrees had more referrals in a shorter period than men, elderly individuals, and people with lower educational level. The results of this survey demonstrated that those who had answered yes to the questions related to behavior had cancelled more of their dental appointments or had not referred. This study showed that 125 individuals (31.0%) were anxiety free, 202 (49.8%) had moderate anxiety, and 60 (18.8%) had strong anxiety. There was a clear association between sex, age, educational degree, and annual referrals and anxiety rate. CONCLUSION: This study showed that gender, age, educational level, and annual number of referrals are effective factors on patient’s anxiety rate. Moreover, there was a meaningful association between cancelled or missed appointments and depression, mood change, and avoiding the dentist.