Your mental health affects your entire body, including your oral health. Over the last few years, medical researchers have been looking into the direct and indirect connections between these two parts of our health. Manifestations of mental illness can affect our oral hygiene, causing oral health problems that exacerbate over time, including illnesses such as depression, eating disorders, anxiety, and schizophrenia. To combat these issues, dentists need to understand how these two aspects of our health intertwine and help patients find treatments that help them have better oral health.
The Unexpected Link Between Mental and Oral Health
Mental illnesses don’t provide visual indicators but rather manifest in such a way that affects how our bodies process information, emotions, and actions. Social stigmas surrounding mental health often isolate individuals with these issues, resulting in difficulties addressing oral concerns. However, studies looking into the effects of mental health have found that its huge impact can cause other health concerns that are left unaddressed, causing lasting consequences. Mental health issues can have a large impact on how people care for their oral health, and various disorders can result in different oral problems, including:
- Eating Disorders: For those with eating disorders, including anorexia and bulimia nervosa, their symptoms don’t just affect their overall body weight. Repeated exposure to stomach acids due to purging and their dietary choices can result in enamel erosion. Enamel erosion causes the teeth to become more sensitive to temperature changes, leaves more grooves for bacteria and plaque to grow, and creates a risk for cavities and gum disease to develop.
- Anxiety: In cases of anxiety disorders, severe symptoms of social anxiety can cause problems with everyday tasks and thus can lead to issues with maintaining oral health. Dental phobias are a type of anxiety that can develop from undealt with issues and feelings of fear resulting from anxiety. People who experience dental phobias will be more likely to avoid dental visits, resulting in issues maintaining their oral health. Anxiety can also cause symptoms such as dry mouth, which also increases the risk of cavities.
- Depression: Depression often leaves people feeling isolated, unmotivated and heavily impacts the way people feel, act, and think. Because of how prevalent and severe this mental illness is, one problem many patients face with depression is difficulty in maintaining routines, including caring for their oral health. Because oral hygiene requires constant care, depression can often increase the risk of cavities and gum disease developing due to neglect created by this condition.
- OCD: Obsessive-compulsive disorder often results in repetitive patterns that need to be repeated through feelings of impulse and anxiety. Overbrushing can be caused by this condition and cause damage to a person’s gums and teeth, wearing down the enamel and leaving the mouth exposed to diseases such as gum disease and tooth decay.
Seek Help Through Your Dentists
Mental health issues that aren’t addressed can have lasting consequences to oral health, as ongoing studies reveal that mental health issues lead to a higher instance of oral health problems. When these problems aren’t addressed, they can become cyclical and increase mental health issues as a result. Through working with your dentists, your dentists can provide you with the best solutions to help you with your oral health concerns through understanding your mental health.
