Abstract
It is important to habituate mentally handicapped persons to dental treatment in order to maintain good oral hygiene over the long term. The purpose of this study was to examine long-term changes of adaptability to dental treatment in such persons.The subjects were 16 profoundly mental retarded persons who had been residents for more than 20 years at "Colony Niigata Shiroiwa-no-Sato", a training institute for mentally handicapped persons in Niigata prefecture, Japan. One dentist evaluated their behavioral reactions subjectively to a routine dental treatment, divided into five situations, from being brought from the waiting space to leaving the treatment room, and classified their reactions into three ranks, as being "adaptable", "medium"and "inadaptable". We compared the current results with previous results that were gathered twice by the same procedure at the start of the initial treatment and at the end of the treatment before 20 years.The results were as follows :1.In all of the five situations, the number of subjects who were evaluated as "adaptable" increased significantly in the current results, compared to the start of the initial treatment before 20 years. The size of the long-term adaptable group (the group with acquired adaptability and the group that main tained adaptability) also increased. We considered that their adaptability was associated with acclima tization to dental treatment through their experience of repeated periodical examinations and with in creased calmness in mind and behavior as they aged.2.Long-term changes were different in each situation. During the dental treatment itself, adaptability showed remarkable improvement in a short time between the start of the initial treatment and the end of the treatment before 20 years. On the other hand, in the situation just before the treatment (from the entrance to the dental chair), adaptability showed less improvement.
