Dental Fear in Children and Adolescents – the Public's Perspective

Successful dental management requires understanding of public's perspectives. The YouTube video-sharing website has recently been used for understanding health behaviours. Objective: Using YouTube as a platform, this qualitative study aimed to understand, from the public's perspective, impacts and causes of dental fears among children/adolescents and possible solutions. Methods: A search of YouTube (www.youtube.com) was performed using three keywords (“dental fear”, “dental phobia” and “dental anxiety”). Videos were included if they were in English and contained a layman's expression/views on children/adolescents' dental fear. Videos of poor quality, irrelevant to the topic, containing pure advertisement/entertainment or professionals' views were excluded. Twenty seven selected videos were transcribed and reviewed by a panel of three (including a layperson) using thematic content analysis. Results: Videos revealed profound negative impacts of dental fear on children/adolescents' psychological well-being, to an extent that is alarming and previously unanticipated by professionals. Testimonials from children/adolescents and their parents suggested multifaceted causes of dental fear, including both “human” and “non-human” factors. “Human” factors revolved around negative influence of the children/adolescents' close relatives and friends, irregular dental visits, frustrating communication between dental personnel and patients/parents, lack of clinical competency and behavioural management skills, unsatisfactory treatment outcomes, and improper work ethics. “Non-human” factors focused on dental settings, procedures, devices and technologies. Some solutions to dental fear emerged, such as support from closely related persons, self-reasoning and distraction, efficient patient-dentist interaction, painless approaches, and state-of-the-art technologies. Conclusion: The findings deepened and enriched our understanding of dental fear and have implications on patient-centred dental management.