Abstract
BackgroundThe oral hygiene of patients with a mental illness is an important concern in psychiatric care, and it is necessary to increase the level of self-care among these patients. In this study, we administered an oral care questionnaire to people with mental illness in Japan and compared their answers before (baseline) and at 1 week and 1, 3 and 6 months after they participated in an educational program.MethodsThe questionnaire was distributed to 390 patients. It included questions about age, education, income, between-meal snacks, number of teeth, frequency of tooth brushing, and other items. The educational program was developed for the purposes of improving self-care.ResultsBefore the program, the proportion of male patients who had had a mental illness for ≥ 10 years was significantly higher among those patients who did not brush their teeth before bed. In addition, such patients did not have primary care dentists, and a significantly higher proportion of male patients, compared with female patients, did not undergo routine dental checkups more than once per year. The educational program resulted in an improvement in the use of fluoride toothpaste from baseline to 6 months after the intervention (p = 0.001). The daily use of interdental brushes or floss was significantly different 6 months after the intervention.ConclusionsMale and long-term inpatients need oral hygiene instructions. Our educational program showed the effects of using oral hygiene tools. Future studies should include a control group to measure the impact of the educational program.
Highlights
The oral hygiene of patients with a mental illness is an important concern in psychiatric care, and it is necessary to increase the level of self-care among these patients
Educational program We developed the educational program used in this study
Oral hygiene instructions for individuals with mental illness Our educational program showed the effects of using oral hygiene tools
Summary
The oral hygiene of patients with a mental illness is an important concern in psychiatric care, and it is necessary to increase the level of self-care among these patients. The number of patients with mental illness in Japan is estimated to be 3,201,000, according to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2011 [1]. This is equivalent to 2.5% of Japan’s total population of 127,799,000. In addition to taking antipsychotic drugs for their primary disease, many patients with mental illness take anti-Parkinson’s drugs for extrapyramidal symptoms because of the side effects of antipsychotic drugs. Surveys conducted in other countries have shown that oral hygiene status was worse in individuals with mental illness than in healthy individuals [4,5,6,7, 9]
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