Could Cosmetic Dental Surgery Improve Your Negative Feelings About Your Overbite?

Posted on: 6 December 2016

The perception of our physical appearance is often a difficult psychological problem for many, which often causes people to go under a variety of corrective surgical treatments. For example, there are people with overbites who get them corrected every year due to psychological trauma associated with the condition. Is this actually helpful?

Overbites Can Have A Severe Psychological Effect

Unless you have an overbite, it can be hard to understand how this minor physical flaw can affect you psychologically. This oral health problem will begin to appear when you are quite young and is typically caused by genetic inheritance, sucking a thumb excessively as a child, or even severe trauma and damage to your jaw. Being teased for this problem can make you feel "ugly" or unattractive.

While it is easy for some people to get psychological help for these feelings, the appearance of the overbite may still remind the person of the teasing and the pain they felt when they were younger. As a result, it can be difficult for people to get over the psychological scars without corrective surgery.

How Cosmetic Surgery Can Help Psychologically

While there is still a lot of research to do on the effect of cosmetic surgery on psychology, there is a chance that correcting a very visible feature (like an overbite) could make a person feel more psychologically strong. It would literally remove the reminder of the pain caused by the condition and help you move on with your life.

Naturally, there may be deeper scars associated with it that need to be healed with regular psychological treatment. However, getting a corrective treatment for an overbite can help you prepare yourself for this psychological healing. From there, you can move on to the more difficult part of your psychological pain management.

Corrective Treatments For Overbites

Thankfully, overbites are a very treatable problem. Corrective treatment for overbites typically follows a three-step process, with each succeeding step occurring only if the last step was unsuccessful:

  1. Invisalign braces that will help shift your teeth back into their proper position
  2. Extracting teeth, if necessary, to re-position your jaw surgically
  3. Operating on your upper jaw to adjust it to align it with your bottom row of teeth

Having an overbite is no cause for shame and many people live their whole lives with one happily. However, there's also no shame in having emotional difficulties with your overbite. If you simply can't handle the psychological pain that it has caused you, corrective treatment and surgery can help. For more information on cosmetic dentistry, check out websites like http://www.larsen-haslemdental.com.

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