Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 25, 2026
Meal Duration as a Measure of Orofacial Nociceptive Responses in Rodents
Published on: January 10, 2014
Psychological treatments for temporomandibular disorder pain-A systematic review
Nikolaos Christidis1, Essam Ahmed Al-Moraissi2, Mohammed Sultan Al-Ak'hali3
1Division of Oral Rehabilitation, Department of Dental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, and Scandinavian Center for Orofacial Neurosciences, Huddinge, Sweden.
Objective:
Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) are common. They affect abilities for carrying out daily tasks and influence different psychological aspects. In addition to standard treatment, psychological treatments have been suggested. The aim was to investigate the effects of psychological treatments on patients with painful TMD in a short- and long-term perspective.
Materials And Methods:
An electronic search was conducted in the databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Registry of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), and Web of Science for randomized clinical trials (RCTs) reporting psychological interventions for TMD. Registered beforehand in PROSPERO (CRD42022320106). In total, 18 RCTs were included; six RCTs that could be used in the meta-analysis, and all 18 RCTs were used in the narrative synthesis. Risk of bias was assessed by the Cochrane's tool for assessing risk of bias and certainty of evidence by GRADE.
Results:
The narrative synthesis indicates that psychological treatment options seem equivalent to standard treatment for painful TMD. The meta-analysis showed that a combination of psychological treatment and standard treatment and manual treatment (very low-quality evidence) are significantly better in pain reduction than just counselling and standard treatments of TMD.
Conclusion:
This study indicates that psychological treatments seem to reduce pain intensity in individuals with painful TMD, and that the effect seems to be equally good as standard treatment. However, a combination of psychological treatments and standard treatments seems to have an even better effect. This indicates that psychological treatments are promising as an additional treatment approach for painful TMDs.
