Dental patients: motivation, resistance and cooperation

Abstract

Successful dental treatment depends on cooperation which is, in turn, influenced by the motivation (M') to receive therapy - as well as by recoil and resistance. M' reflects a patient's personality with all its complex patterns of psychological drives: natural (congenital?) tendencies and acquired habits, reactions to past dental experiences. Many of these factors remain unconscious in the patient. M' reflects the basic personality mechanisms, as well as actual needs, dental (healing) and non-dental, non-somatic. These latter needs are related to hypochondriacal insecurity, or to attempts to obtain a "secondary gain", etc. Some of the factors are not even related to the patient himself but rather to social forces, to the issue of payment, and to the dentist's characteristics. Aiming at maximal therapeutic efficiency, and for an optimal handling of patients' motivation, the dentist should pay attention to their personality patterns. His clear, openly expressed interest in their total life circumstances and their existence, as extension of his history taking and oro-dental examination, together with a firm, positive approach - these reduce anxiety and diminish resistance in many cases, for a better cooperation.