Psychological distress and emotional pain among adult attendees of a dental clinic: a case-control study

Abstract

We set out to carry out a case-control evaluation of psychological distress and emotional pain among adult attendees of a Nigerian dental clinic. A total of 201 subjects, made up of 101 dental patients (test group) matched with age and sex with 100 normal subjects (controls), was recruited into the study. All participants completed a designed socio-demographic questionnaire. General Health Question naire and Psyche ache Assessment Schedule were also administered to assess psychological distress based on cut-off scores ?3 and emotional pain based on cut-off scores ?28 respectively. The mean ages of study and control group were 33 (±12) and 36 (±13) years respectively, and both study and control groups were not significantly different in all the assessed socio-demographic parameters. Overall, 21.8% (n=22) of the subjects had psychological distress, while only 7% of the control group had psychological distress. This difference was statistically significant (P=0.003). Similarly, there was significant difference in the experience of psyche ache (unbearable psychological pain) as over a third of the dental patients (37.6%, n=38) had emotional pain, while only 13% of the controls experienced psych ache (P<0.001). In this study, the burden of psychological distress and emotional pain was many-fold in dental patients when compared with the controls.

Citation

Erinfolami, A.R., Olagunju, A.T., Oshodi, Y.O., Akinbode, A.A., Fadipe, B. and Adeyemo, W.L. (2016), "Psychological distress and emotional pain among adult attendees of a dental clinic: a case-control study", Mental Illness, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1108/mi.2016.6006