Bullying and Dental Appearance

January 5, 2014

Posted By: Stephen Murray

Bullying and Dental Appearance - getting grief about your teeth

If there's one thing I hate to see or hear about in the course of my work as an orthodontist, it's bullying. Just last month there was an article in the American Journal of Orthodontics about bullying and teeth. Thankfully it's not too often I came across it among my patients in Swords Orthodontics, but it does happen. Although the research happened in another country, it happens in Ireland too, and from Skerries to Santry, or Balbriggan to Boroimhe, and anywhere in between, kids can be given grief by other kids about all manner of things, and that includes the appearance of their teeth.

At one end of the scale I see people that aren't happy with the appearance of their teeth, especially when they smile, and at the other end, I see people that are actually being given a hard time by others about the way their teeth look.

In the research, they looked at about 900 12-year old children and about half of them were bullied in some form, with the appearance of their teeth being the most common reason for bullying. Typical reasons for bullying about teeth included missing teeth, abnormally shaped teeth and prominent upper teeth.

If you want to read a summary of the research he's talking about, here's a link to the article in the American Journal of Orthodontics - you can copy and paste it into your web browser to go to the journal.

http://www.ajodo.org/article/S0889-5406(13)00830-5/abstract

and here's a link to a TV item in the USA about it

http://fox2now.com/2014/01/01/smiles-can-change-lives/

Return to Blog Homepage

Related Blog Posts

September 6, 2026

Didn't know she didn't smile

Had a young patient in for the first time last week, accompanied by her mum. They both knew what needed fixed - a top tooth biting inside the lower teeth instead of outside them: a crossbite.

I went through my usual orthodontic assessment for a new patient, measuring this and that, but I also asked “would your teeth stop you smiling for a photo?”

“Yes.”

I could see her mum’s face change tone, and she said “you never said that, you never told me you didn’t smile.”

At the end of the appointment, after she’d left the room her mum said the same thing to …

July 17, 2026

I'd like to cancel my son's appointment

It was something like a scene from Derry Girls or The Inbetweeners, but last week we actually had a teenage patient phone the practice pretending to be his own father to cancel the appointment he was meant to attend that day.

So…. his parents would think he was taking time …

October 7, 2025

Why retainers are important

I had a patient come in this afternoon for an appointment that was marked in the diary as “retainer review”.

When I opened up his notes, it turned out that his orthodontic treatment finished over 3 years ago and we hadn’t seen him in almost 3 years. At that stage we had made him a spare retainer and he never came back to us to have it fitted.

When he came in, I said “so we haven’t seen you in nearly 3 years.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. Really busy with the leaving cert and that sort of thing,” he said. He explained that …

Return to Blog Homepage