DENTAL AESTHETICS AND ITS IMPACT ON THE PSYCHOSOCIAL WELLBEING AMONG DENTAL AND MEDICAL CLINICAL YEAR STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GHANA

Objective: This study aimed to assess dental aesthetics and its psychosocial impact among clinical year students of the University of Ghana Medical and Dental Schools. Methodology: The study was a cross-sectional study with 212 clinical year students. Data was collected from a well-structured online questionnaire and analyzed using chi squared test from the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 26 at a p-value < 0.05. Results: Out of 212 people who participated in the study, 60% were females and 40% males. Majority of the participants (53.77%) had inadequate knowledge of dental aesthetics. Most of the participants (61.32%) had high levels of dental confidence, however majority (59%) still desired to have some cosmetic treatment done. A greater number of participants (81%) neither suffered psychologically or socially due to their dentition. A negative correlation was observed between dental confidence and the psychosocial wellbeing with a correlation co-efficient of-0.465. Conclusion: Generally, respondents had poor knowledge about dental aesthetics even though majority of the respondents had undergone at least one aesthetic procedure in the past. Most of the respondents were satisfied with their dental appearance. Many respondents still desired to have cosmetic treatment done with only few willing to pay any amount of money to have said treatment done.