Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) Remediates Dental Fear: A Case Series

Case series👥 5 participants⚖️ vs. 3-week baseline phase (own-control design)Preliminary✓ Source-checked📍 United States

In plain English. Five women with serious dental fear, some who'd avoided the dentist for years, did four hour-long tapping sessions. By the end, all four of the most fearful women showed a real, clinically meaningful drop in their dental fear and anxiety, and the improvement was still holding when researchers checked back in about seven months later. This is a small case series with no comparison group, so it shows tapping can work for individuals in real clinical use rather than proving it beats other treatments.

What they found

people took part

Over four one-hour EFT sessions across an eight-week study (three-week baseline, four-week treatment, posttest, and average 7.5-month follow-up), all four high-dental-fear participants achieved reliable and clinically significant reductions in trait dental fear and/or state dental anxiety, and ratings of one to six of the ten commonly feared dental stimuli moved into the normal range.

How the study worked

Who took partfive women aged 52-70 (mean 60.8), four with high dental fear and one with gagging-related anxiety but low dental fear (n=5)

What they didThis is a detailed report following a small number of individual cases through tapping.

Compared with3-week baseline phase (own-control design)

Measured withtrait dental fear scale, state dental anxiety measure, ratings of 10 commonly feared dental stimuli

💡 Where this could help

If findings like these hold up in larger trials, the promise is simple: a low-cost, self-administered tool that could reach people struggling with phobias who can't easily access traditional care — at home, between appointments, or where there aren't enough clinicians to go around.

🔬 What to study next

The natural next step: a larger sample to confirm the effect, and a randomized controlled design.

The full record

Design	Case series
Participants	5 people
Population	five women aged 52-70 (mean 60.8), four with high dental fear and one with gagging-related anxiety but low dental fear
Comparison group	3-week baseline phase (own-control design)
Outcome measures	trait dental fear scale, state dental anxiety measure, ratings of 10 commonly feared dental stimuli
Journal	Energy Psychology: Theory, Research, and Treatment
Year	2016
Country	United States
Language	English
Method	EFT / tapping
Publication type	Case report
Verification	✓ Confirmed against the primary source

Read the original study →

Cite this study

APA

Cartland, A.M. (2016). Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) Remediates Dental Fear: A Case Series. Energy Psychology: Theory, Research, and Treatment.

This record is part of the Tapping Evidence Base — an openly-sourced, fully-referenced directory of the research on EFT/tapping. Explore more studies on Phobias