Stress is recognized as a major predisposing and/ or precipitating factor in long-lastig intractable chronic pain, such as temporomandibular disorders, headache, and other psychophysiological disorders. So it is necessary to detect physical and psychological changes induced by stress for positive treatment outcome as soon as possible.
This study was performed to investigate the occurrence rate of stress symptoms according to anatomic region, type of symptom, and other personal and social factors. 859 subjects from general population answered the stress symptom questionnaire devised by the author and composed of 50 items. Data from the questionnaire were analyzed statistically with SPSS program and the results obtained were as follows
1. Oral symptom which showed the highest frequency rate of 38.8% was vesicular lesion of the lip and cheek. The other symptoms with more than 20% occurrence rate were ulcerative lesion of lip and cheek, toothache, paresthesia of teeth, eruption of tongue, tongue coating and taste change in descending order.
2. In extraoral symptoms, sleep disturbance was the item which showed the highest frequency rate of 62.0%, and the items for stiffness of suboccipital region and neck, headache, facial swelling,
furuncle of face were answered more than 45% of the subjects whereas only 14.0% of the subjects complained jaw pain under stress.
3. The better one who thought his or her health status was, the fewer items were answered and the difference of symptom frequency by dwelling place and by having hobby were shown in extraoral symptoms only.
4. For relief of stress symptorm, 79.2% of the subjects replied only to take a rest whereas not more than 13.5% of the subjects visited dental clinic. Conelationship between symptom sites were very high.
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