Self-assessed bruxism and phobic symptomatology

The aim of this observational study was to compare two samples of patients (identified, from a previous survey carried out in 2007, as self-assessed bruxers and not) on the basis of the presence of anxious/phobic symptoms, general and linked to an oral surgery.

Forty-three bruxers and 207 non-bruxers were identified; among these last ones a sub-sample of 89 subjects was randomly selected as control and analyzed. The instruments for data collecting were two self-administered psychological questionnaires: STAI-Y1, Phobia Scale by Marks-Sheehan, and supplementary items on specific dental fear/phobia.

No significant differences were observed for age, gender and occupation data but interestingly bruxers are significantly more represented among widows/divorced and graduated in comparisons with non-bruxers. Alcohol consumers were more frequent in bruxers than in non-bruxers (55.8% and 12.4%, respectively; P=0.0001). Global anxiety (P=0.02), agoraphobia, claustrophobia, pathophobia, social phobia (P<0.05), are more frequent in bruxers as also a suffocation feeling (P=0.02). The severity of behaviours that aim to avoid the same situations that causes phobias is low and similar in the two groups.

The involuntary habit of clenching is, in our opinion, reported by the patients who control their anxiety/phobias without avoiding behaviours, increasing the muscular activity at a level relevant to bruxism.