OBJECTIVES: Depression is the leading cause of disability in the world and its association with oral health is not fully established. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between depression and the patient’s willingness to go to the dentist on their own. A secondary data analysis was performed to study the association between depression and the patient’s last dental visit.
METHODS: This is a cross-sectional analysis of NHANES deidentified data from 2011 to 2018 (N =17,330). Logistic regression models were tested for reason and the time of last dental visit and covariates. Multiple logistic regression models were analyzed for associations between dental visit variables and the outcomes.
RESULTS: After adjusting for potential confounders: age, gender, ethnicity, marital status; levels of income and education we found statistically significant results in both bivariate and adjusted multivariate regression models that people with moderate to severe depression were 0.7 times less likely to visit the dentist on the own (OR 0.7, CI 0.6 -0.8) as compared to patients with none to mild depression. For the secondary outcome variable of interest, people with moderate to severe depression has 1.2 times the odds of having visited the dentist more than 2 years ago as compared to people with none to mild depression (OR 1.23, CI 1.08 -1.4).
CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that people with moderate to severe depression tend to avoid visiting dentist for regular checkups and cleanings and are more likely to delay their visit to more than two years.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/44993 |
| Date | 11 August 2022 |
| Creators | Singh, Inder |
| Contributors | Tavares, Mary |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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