The Dental-Mental Connection: A Clinic in Oakland’s Chinatown Brings Mental Health Care to Dental Patients
Two years ago, Stanley T.’s parents passed away. The 54-year-old retired electrician, who emigrated with them to the Bay Area from Vietnam over four decades ago, experienced profound grief from his loss. He couldn’t talk about it with his wife, who’d also passed away. And he hid how he was feeling from his two grown kids.
“I didn’t want to burden other people with my issues,” said Stanley, who asked that his last name be withheld to protect his privacy.
Around the same time, he went for a routine dental check-up at Asian Health Services in Oakland, Calif., and filled out a patient intake form like he does every visit. This time, though, there was an additional list of questions inviting him to rate how he’d recently been feeling: How often does he feel little to no interest in doing things? Does he think about hurting himself? It surprised him to be asked these questions, but he answered anyway – and began an unexpected journey into therapy.
Dentistry and the medical profession have long been siloed. And let’s be honest: The dentist chair isn’t normally a place people want to be. Yet recently, dozens of community health centers around the country from California to Idaho to Virginia have begun incorporating depression screenings into their dental practices, recognizing the dentist’s office as an underused door into mental health treatment.
The most obvious connection people make between the mouth and mind “is the anxiety that patients have when it comes to dental care,” says Candace Owen, a dental hygienist who’s the education director for the National Network for Oral Health Access (NNOHA).
Dentists may also observe changes in oral health, she says – such as a failure to brush regularly and a drop in visits to the dentist – that can signal an issue like depression or anxiety. Likewise, poor oral health – such as missing teeth or painful abscesses – can undermine a patient’s confidence and peace of mind. Bad teeth can also limit people’s ability to get jobs, cause low self-esteem and lead people to isolate themselves and avoid social interactions or intimacy.
Community health centers are ideal sites for integrating oral care and mental health treatment because they already provide a variety of services, unlike a private dental practice. They’re also more accessible to, and needed by, low-income people, who tend to have poorer dental health than wealthier people because they can’t afford to go regularly to the dentist.
