Abstract
Many kinds of examination method of children's psychological conditions in dental treatments have been reported. However, those methods have some difficulties applying to mentally retarded children. Therefore we applied a new color selection method combined with facial figure selection to investigate the psychological conditions of mentally retarded children and examined the validity of the method. The method was carried out with one selection from 7 colors (white, red, pink, yellow, blue, green, black) and the facial figure before and after treatment. The subjects consisted of 17 mentally retarded persons (MR group) (10-41y, mean age: 26 y 4 m, mentally developmental age: 4 y 8 m)and 17 healthy children (Control group) (3-5y, mean age: 3 y 9 m) at the Pediatric and Disabled Patient Clinic of Osaka Dental University Hospital. Nine items were examined; the color and shape classification test, entering attitude to the clinic, selected color before and after treatment, selected facial figure before and after treatment, dental treatment, the attitude during treatment and the colors which they like.
The results were as follows:
1. Between the MR group an d the Control group, significant differences were seen in the items of the color and shape classification test, entering attitude to the clinic, selected color before treatment, dental treatment.
2. The selected colors were changed before and after treatment in 15 out of 17 of MR group and in 12 out of 17 of the control group, and there was a significant difference between the selected color change and the dental treatments (p< 0.01, p< 0.05).
3. Each color didn't always agree with the same facial figures, then it was suggested that the image of the color could not be fixed and it depended on each subject.
4. The color selection method was easy to use for the MR group and it was considered to be possible to use as an examination method of psychological conditions by adding investigations of the color image in each subject.
