Many people are scared of the loss of control or feeling of helplessness they experience in the dental chair. This can be due, for example, to past experiences where a dentist proceeded with treatment in spite of you being in obvious distress, a past abuse, or a general preference for being in control of situations.
The feeling of helplessness and loss of control can be overwhelming. This can lead to a cycle of avoidance that causes millions of people to go without dental care until there is an emergency.
Dental emergencies cause a crisis for you and your loved ones, missed work, increased expenses, usually involve drugs and finding a doctor that takes emergencies.
...it is common knowledge in Psychology circles that when a person feels out of control or helpless, that their perception of pain is greatly magnified. Men are classically worse patients than women when it comes to the doctor or the dentist, but men during war time do heroic things in spite of injuries sometimes that are life threatening. This is because a soldier has a weapon and a confidence that speaks to control even in chaos. The dental chair has many aspects that contribute to a feeling of helplessness - loss of control laying back with the belly exposed, not knowing what is going on inside their mouth, inability to stop the procedure and needing to get attention to do so if pain is felt. All these things contribute to a feeling of helplessness and loss of control thus setting up people to feel pain when in reality the teeth are numb and the rumbling from the drill is only quite ordinary !
The Dental Button quite simply addresses the patients sense of helplessness by giving them control of the drill and consequently substantially increasing their comfort.
- Dr. Paul Vandivort - Doctor of Psychology
...it's basic psychology !
There has been a lot of research in cognitive psychology on fear and the perception of fear, especially in the post 9-11 world. What they have found is that when people feel in control, they feel less fear.
That is the logic behind the reason why many people are more afraid to fly on an airplane rather than drive in a car, even though there are far more fatalities from car accidents than airplane accidents.People will tell you the reason why they aren't afraid to drive their car is, 'I feel I'm in control.'
- Wendy Pecka - Psychology professor