People with severe mental health difficulties are more likely to have poor dental health and dental disorders

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Masuma Pervin Mishu summarises an umbrella review on the prevalence of dental disorders among people with severe mental illness.

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mHealth promotion for parents to improve children’s oral health

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This review of the effectiveness of the mHealth-delivered oral health education to parents parents regarding the improvement of parents’ knowledge, behaviours and children’s oral health status included 12 studies. The studies findings were variable with some demonstrating benefit and some no benefit with all 8 of the included RCTs being at high risk of bias.

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Oral health interventions in children and adolescents with special needs

Down Syndrome

Carly Ross takes a look at this review of different oral health education and promotion interventions for children and adolescents with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Eighteen studies were included but they mainly of very low to low certainty.

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Oral health self-care behaviours in people with a serious mental illness

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This review of the of oral health self-care behaviours in people with serious mental illness (SMI) included 33 studies. Most of the included studies (18) were cross-sectional and a mjority (20)were considered to be of weak design.

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Mobile applications and behaviour change in orthodontic patients

This RCT looked at whether Mentalization Based Treatment for Adolescents reduced self-harming beahviour

This review of the effectiveness of mobile applications and social media-based interventions in inducing behaviour change among orthodontic patients included 16 RCTs. While the findings suggest some limited beneficial changes in orthodontic patients the interventions are very hetrogeneous and not based on clear behavioural change theory.

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Prevention toolkit from Public Health England

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An updated version of ‘Delivering Better Oral Health, ’ the oral health prevention toolkit published iby Public Health England to provide practical evidence-based guidance for promoting oral health and preventing oral disease is now available.

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Motivational Interviewing: Is it effective in preventing early childhood caries?

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This review of teh effectivenesss of motivational interviewing (MI) in the prevention of early childhood caries included 14 trials of which eight ccontributed to the meta-analyses. The findings suggest that approached based on MI may be useful in prevention of early childhood caries.

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Oral health promotion programmes for adolescents

Accessing online mental health sites is becoming easier due to the availability of laptops and smart phones, meaning teenagers can be connected wherever they are

This review of the effectiveness of health promotion interventions on oral health knowledge, behaviour and status of healthy adolescents included 28 programmes reported in 37 publications.

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Promoting parental supervised toothbrushing practices

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This review of interventions promoting parental supervised toothbrushing practices to reduce caries in children under 8 years included 42 studies. Few of the interventions were underpinned by theory and methodological rigour in their development and evaluation so future interventions need to be guided by complex intervention methodology.

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Root caries risk predictors

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This review of risk predictors of root caries was based on 16 cohorts. The findings suggest a number of risk predictors but only 4 of the included studies were considered to be of high quality.

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