DENTAL DISEASE IN PSYCHIATRIC PATIENTS

¹ Harvard School of Dental Medicine and Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Boston, Mass.

A group of 2,212 in-patients at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital between the ages of 10 and 50 years were studied for possible relationships between mental state and dental disease, the latter expressed in terms of DMF teeth. This patient group as a whole shows a somewhat lower DMF rate than was found by Hyde among Boston military selectees in 1943 and a considerably lower DMF rate than was found by Dunning and Klein among industrial employees in New York City in 1942. Since these differences may be regional or due to differences in examination methods and since the hospital group showed a wide range of mental states, it was decided to use this group as its own base line. For purposes of analysis the sample was divided into 5-year age groups. Few mental diagnostic groups showed any significant difference from the DMF rates for the sample as a whole. Those differences that were found were small.

Patients with manic-depressive psychosis had a higher DMF rate at every age studied, although the differences were so small and the number of cases in the samples were so small that statistical significance was only obtained by a small margin when the series was considered as a whole. Patients 30 to 40 years of age showing alcoholism (without psychosis) also had a higher DMF rate accompanied by a higher tooth mortality (M teeth).

Further study of larger and more chronic groups is desirable.