Don't Panic! Dental anxiety and it's treatment. An evening with Consultant Psychologist and Cognitive-Behaviour Therapist Vania Miteva and Prof Zac Morse.

Don’t panic! Dental anxiety and its treatment.

This will be a shared presentation with Prof Morse presenting for the first half and Vania for the second part.  

Prof Morse will discuss:

• What is dental anxiety, prevalence and changes over the lifetime
• What are the issues associated with dental anxiety
• How to identify and measure dental anxiety
• What causes dental anxiety and how to treat it

Vania will focus on:

• Psychological therapies for dental anxiety: past and present
• Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy - different psychological approaches to treating dental anxiety
• A word or two on dentists’ anxiety

About our speakers:

Prof Zac Morse is currently Professor of Oral Health at the Auckland University of Technology and an active clinical dental practitioner.

He was awarded a Bachelor of Dental Surgery and Honours Degree of Bachelor of Science in Dentistry (with First Class Honours) from the University of Adelaide, Graduate Diploma in Clinical Dentistry (Conscious Sedation and Pain Control) from the University of Sydney, Doctor of Philosophy from the Nippon Dental University, Japan, Postgraduate Diploma in Endodontics from the British Academy of Restorative Dentistry, and a Certificate in Advanced Orthodontics from Hong Kong.

He has published extensively in the pharmacological management of dental pain and anxiety control. However, recognising the limitations of a drug-based approach, he has shifted toward investigating non-pharmacological treatments for this ubiquitous problem. Nowadays, most of his research is interprofessional.

He has lived, worked in and been exposed to diverse environments, cultures and languages.

Vania Miteva is a NZ trained registered Consultant Psychologist with 15 years’ experience, and over 15 000 hours face-to-face clinical work. Over these years she has filled clinical, leadership, facilitating, consultancy, and community roles.

Clinically she has worked in primary mental health, adult community mental health teams, and in an inpatient unit, with people who were acutely troubled and distressed. She has also worked with Maori mental health services and Alcohol and other drugs services.

In her leadership roles she has experience in governance as a past Board member and President of Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) Association of Australia and in quality improvement initiatives for NZ-based providers of psychological and psychiatric services.

She also has extensive experience in workshop development and facilitation covering psychology and complex mental health, alongside workplace wellbeing, provided in English and Bulgarian languages.

Vania’s main area of interest and expertise is trauma and adverse life experiences. She has provided psychological support to individuals with trauma history, first responders, and medical professionals. She also worked with the crew members and individuals on the cruise ship involved with the Whakaari White Island eruption in 2019. In her work she draws from predominantly CBT and EMDR, alongside other therapeutic models such as Solution-focused, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT).

Vania is a member of:

• New Zealand Psychological Society (NZPsS)
• Institute of Health Psychology
• Bulgarian Psychological Society
• Division of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy
• Aotearoa New Zealand Association for Cognitive-Behavioural Therapies (ANZACBT)
• EMDRA Association Australia (EMDRAA)