The evaluation of the psychological state and the sleep quality on people who have bruxism

Purpose: Students of the Faculty of Dentistry in Yeditepe University to investigate the relation between the sleep quality and the psychological state of people who are diagnosed to have bruxism. Materil and Method: A total of 218 individuals including students completing their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th year of education have been participated in our studies. Before performing the clinical examination, a questionnaire regarding the diagnosis of bruxism has been forwarded to the individuals. With the clinical examination, intraoral symptoms of bruxism have been detected. At the same time, the type of bruxism, such as active and passive, has been identified. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) has been used in order to assess the sleep quality. To evaluate the psychological state, however, Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R) has been used. Result: During the research, bruxism has been detected on 163 people out of 218 which equals to 74.8% of the total population. The percentage of students with bruxism having poor sleep quality is equal to 68.7, while this percentage decreases to 30.9 on students without bruxism. Statistically, the percentage is significantly high for the students with bruxism. On 29 (17.8%) students out of 163 with bruxism, high level of psychological symptoms has been detected. On the other hand, for the rest 134 (82.2%) students, it has been noted that the psychological symptoms are in lower levels. Among 161 (98.8%) students out of 163, at least one psychological symptom has been detected. In our reseach, the statistics have shown that depression and anxiety symptoms on students with bruxism are significantly higher than on students without bruxism. When the distribution of pyschological symptom test sub units on classes is examined, it has been noted that phobic reactions and hostility symptoms are statistically higher on 3rd year students suffering from bruxism. Similarly, somatization symptoms are detected to be high also on the 3rd and 5th year students. Conclusion: In our studies, we have detected poor sleep quality on individuals having bruxism. For the same group, we have identified the general psychological symptom level as low. In this case, when the psychopathology and the sleep quality of individuals with bruxism are compared with eachother, a negative correlation has been detected in between. There are no other existing studies in literature analyzing the correlation between bruxism, sleep quality and psychological state, which expresses further studies are needed.