REVIEW ARTICLE Motivational Interviewing in Pediatric Dentistry: Role in Behavior Management Sonu Acharya A BSTRACT There is a rise in demand for pediatric dentists in pediatric settings to look into not only the physical but also the psychological health of their child and adolescent patients. Brief interventions (BIs), and in particular motivational interviewing (MI), ofers an ideal means of changing behavioral, developmental and social problems within the scenario of dental practice in pedodontics. Motivational interviewing is a well-established and tested method of counseling made by Miller and Rollnick and thought of as a useful modifcation strategy in treatment of lifestyle diseases. This makes the patients motivated and helps them to the process of change. Once the healthier behavior is learned, it can increase or decrease the likelihood for sustained behavior change. Motivational interviewing is a psychological instrument developed in recent times with main objective of providing patients, including children with low motivation to achieve and retain behavioral changes. Motivational interviewing can be used in pedodontics for increased capability in proper brushing, fossing, and application of fuoride varnish. Thus, this review is aimed to know the role of MI in pediatric dentistry as a whole. Keywords: Behavior, Behavior change theory, Motivational interviewing, Pediatric dentistry. Journal of South Asian Association of Pediatric Dentistry (2019): 10.5005/jp-journals-10077-3030 I NTRODUCTION Oral health is a neglected avenue in front of overall health and has historically been low on demand of national policy makers. 1 The reasons are complicated and many. In many countries, oral health is neglected in national health surveys. And, even though data are collected, it is usually alone notwithstanding the general health. 2 Dentists have not taken due interest in promoting good oral health, preferring always to treat instead of preventing oral diseases. And, in the view that poor oral health causes morbidity rather than mortality, governments have given oral conditions little importance than other, more life-threatening diseases. 3 Oral diseases can be prevented by taking efective measures throughout life. Taking adequate measures in home care and avoiding unhealthy lifestyle can lead to disease prevention. Prevention of oral disease is important and can be achieved. 4 Science-based, simple, and cheaper preventive methods exist, but they need to be judiciously promoted and implemented. Counseling pediatric dental patients by using persuasion and confrontation mostly fails in promoting behavior changes. 5 Customary physician recommendation on health behavior is usually not met and can lead to regret in the mind of clinician and problem for patient. In 1983, research began on the use of motivational interviewing (MI). 6 Motivational interviewing is an evidence-based approach used to impart health behavior change through counseling. Motivational interviewing utilizes a patient- centric and direct approach that sees discrepancies between a person’s current attitude and their future perspective. 7 A patient- centered talk facilitates discussion of psychological issues that might directly or indirectly have an efect on total health outcomes. Particularly, patient-centered communication, where patients’ interest is paramount, has seen to be with increased parental satisfaction, adherence to pediatric treatment recommendations, and disclosure of psychological diseases. 8 Motivational interviewing is based on the communication and attitude between the patient and the instructor, which is an integral part of pediatric dentist. Parents and caregivers are considered to be an integral component in the promotion of oral health of preschool children and so their oral health knowledge, attitudes, and behavior may infuence early childhood oral health. Age-old dental health education programs with main focus on improving the parents oral health has not seen to be efective in increasing little children’s oral health. Motivational interviewing is different from traditional health education approaches in that sense, that from the initial moment a person is prepared to start trying on the information imparted to them by an expert. Instead of the health professional performing the role of “expert,” motivational interviewing tries to place the patient/parent in this signifcant role, making them to decide how they want to use this information in their own lives. This approach (MI) is better than counseling in pediatric dental setup as the onus is on parents/child to act on their oral health. So this approach should be used more often by the pediatric dentist as a preventive approach in oral diseases. W HAT IS M OTIVATIONAL I NTERVIEWING ? Motivational interviewing is a way of talking with people about change related to things we often have mixed feelings about; it Department of Pediatric and Preventive Dentistry, Institute of Dental Sciences, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be University), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India Corresponding Author: Sonu Acharya, Department of Pediatric and Preventive Dentistry, Institute of Dental Sciences, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be University), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, Phone: +91 9937793095, e-mail: sonu_ain@yahoo.com How to cite this article: Acharya S. Motivational Interviewing in Pediatric Dentistry: Role in Behavior Management. J South Asian Assoc Pediatr Dent 2019;2(2):69–72. Source of support: Nil Confict of interest: None © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and non-commercial reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.