A study by a team of Italian researchers coordinated by Carlo Bertoldi, associate professor of Periodontology at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, recently published in the journal Acta Odontologica Scandinavica, has shown that in periodontology too a patient’s personality traits can influence the outcome of treatment.
The study found that having a positive yet realistic character may protect periodontal health; conversely, personality traits that lead people to withdraw into themselves and to struggle to grasp the complexity of the outside world and their own inner world may reduce the effectiveness of periodontal therapy.
This research also showed once again that no human being is an island, nor made up of watertight compartments: the body as a whole is interconnected and, through personality, interrelated with its surroundings.
Personality, unlike states of mind such as anxiety or depression, characterises the patient before and after treatment, not only during the active phase of therapy. It therefore also influences the patient’s situation when they first see the periodontist, and how the patient will be once the “active” phase of periodontal treatment has ended and given way to the necessary supportive phase that follows, made up of check-ups and any further treatment recalls.
According to Bertoldi, it is important for periodontists to be aware that certain personality types are a disadvantage in the clinical control of periodontal health. This disadvantage must be recognised and addressed by personalising the therapy and drawing on professional psychological support which, through appropriate behavioural programmes, can help ensure that periodontal treatment succeeds.
Our mouths “resemble” us, and in this sense periodontal therapy cannot be a single treatment that is the same for everyone: it must be adapted case by case, without ever losing sight of the human being as a physical and psychological whole and of their relationship with their surroundings.
