Nanna Geertsen suffers from a schizoaffective disorder, and hallucinations are a daily part of her life.

“It only takes a single night of bad sleep for everything to fall apart for me. The mood swings start and the hallucinations come. It goes so very fast.”

Nanna describes schizoaffective disorder as having schizophrenia and bipolar disorder at the same time. The disorder is chronic, and is characterised by people experiencing a combination of symptoms associated with schizophrenia and mood disorders. These include hallucinations, states of delusion, mania and depression.

Her condition means that she has previously been hospitalised for short and long periods of time. Getting the inmu though has changed that.

“Normally I would have been hospitalised—but that was before I got the inmu. When my hands are shaking, and I’m sitting with the inmu, it almost feels like they are cancelling each other out.”

Nanna uses the inmu to find peace and calm when her mind goes off on a tangent.

“When I was in the hospital, it was a problem that my feelings were all over the place. It’s almost like if you take a ball with all of your feelings inside and shake it.”

After getting the inmuRELAX though, she has experienced a marked improvement, as it helps her to better control her feelings.

“The inmu helped centre my feelings. It made me feel more level. And it made me feel like I’m myself again. It was an amazing feeling. It was just amazing. Sometimes using the inmu has made me cry with joy, because suddenly I’ve been able to feel myself again.”

The inmu has also helped Nanna in other ways. Because using the inmu is enough for her to find rest and fall asleep, she has been able to cut down on her sleeping and sedative medication.

“After I got the inmu, I haven’t taken Truxal to relax in the evening. And I’ve also stopped taking Zolpidem to help me fall asleep.”

Truxal is a sedative antipsychotic. Zolpidem is short-term sleeping medication used in severe cases of insomnia.

What inmuRELAX does to help

By producing gentle vibrations and calming music, inmuRELAX can help soothe dental anxiety. It creates a calming atmosphere, and gives the patient something else to focus on.

Anxieties are never rational, and it is often the smallest things that can be the greatest source of anxiety, such as the sound of the drill, the sight of a needle lying on a tray or the smell of the dental clinic. Even just hearing the dentist talk using technical terms to describe one’s teeth during an examination can seem frightening.

It’s the anticipation of pain and of discomfort that is unnerving, the fear of the unknown—not necessarily the examination or treatment itself. Lying in the dentist chair can make you feel like you are powerless, and the feeling of not being in control can be a major trigger for anxiety.

inmuRELAX can help give the patient some of that feeling of control back by providing a comfortable distraction. Once in a while the patient has to interact with inmuRELAX by pressing or stroking it in order to keep the vibrations and the music playing. That gives the patient an easy task to focus on. inmuRELAX has a soft cover, and details such as the golden wave that runs around it, which can keep the fingers distracted.

The gentle vibrations help you calm down, and this makes it easier for the patient to drift away.

For dentists and dental hygienists, using inmuRELAX can make their work easier, because they don’t need to spend as much time talking to the patient to keep the patient distracted.

With inmuRELAX you not only have a beautiful soft cushion to hold and keep your hands busy, but you also have the relaxing and calming music and soft vibrations. With your hand in the pocket you feel safe and can more easily get away into your own world while the dentist is doing his or her job.

“Good planning is everything”

Dental hygienist Nina Rune has twelve years’ experience giving dental treatments to kids and teenagers with dental anxiety.

“The most important thing when working with people with dental anxiety, is to take everything one step at a time. To remain calm and not stray from what you’ve planned beforehand. Good planning is everything,” Nina Rune explains.

Nina uses the inmu to calm and to distract her patients while she examines them.

“They feel like they can relax”

“At the clinic we specialise in treating kids and teenagers with dental anxiety. Basically, we have collected the patients here that have anxieties or special needs—diagnosed and undiagnosed. They come here, and they feel like they can relax.”

“One of my patients is a 17-year-old boy. When he comes to the clinic, he’ll stand around for a bit in the waiting room. He just has to get used to the situation and go through the procedures with us before we begin. He’ll tell me that he’s ready, and we can begin the treatment.”

Going through the individual steps of the treatment and making the patient comfortable with the procedure and the instruments used during the treatment is important in making the patient as comfortable as possible before the treatment begins.

In some cases, she and her colleagues will even let a patient come in at a time when there is no one else in the clinic.

“It can feel embarrassing to be afraid to go to the dentist”

“For some of the boys it can feel embarrassing to be afraid to go to the dentist, and they don’t want their friends to know that they feel nervous about coming here.” 

She also visits people’s own homes. For many people with dental anxiety simply being in the dental clinic can feel frightening.

“Sometimes we’ll do home visits too before patients come to the clinic, to reassure them about what is going to happen during the procedure.”

“Everything gets easier when you are calm”

And often Nina Rune will start out slow. First by simply having the patient lie down in the dentist chair. Then by making a simple, non-invasive examination of the patient’s teeth. Slowly, and by taking everything one step at a time, she makes the patient accustomed to the situation and the environment, and when he or she feels like they are ready to move on to the next step, Nina will continue the treatment.

Often even simple procedures can be triggering for someone with dental anxiety.

“The last time he was here, we were making a mould for a nightguard for him, because he has been grinding his teeth. That’s something he has never tried before. And he wasn’t too happy about it. He had been worried about the procedure for several days when he came here.”

“I told him about the inmuRELAX, and told him that I thought it would help him. And it really did. It helped him calm down, and everything gets easier when you are calm. He was very excited about using the inmuRELAX. It made a huge difference. The inmuRELAX really saved him.”

“The inmu really saved him”

Through using inmuRELAX she has found that the inmuRELAX can help calm and provide a distraction during the procedure.

“I’ll give them the inmuRELAX when they are lying in the chair. Then I’ll use a disinfectant wipe to clean their hands. I’ll put the inmuRELAX on their stomach and guide their hand into the pocket.”

Instead of focusing on the look of the dentist’s instruments and on what is going on inside their mouth, they can instead focus their attention on the inmuRELAX; on the soft material, on the music, and on the gentle vibrations that it produces.

Several studies have shown that music can heal an injured brain. It may sound strange, but it is because music and rhythm are deeply rooted in us. Just think about how we can show our emotions through music.

The brain is an extremely complex organ that reflects and organises all the information it gets through our entire life. The brain has the ability to use music to build new connections in the brain—also if it has been damaged, and it does this in cooperation with the rest of the body. This is why music is not only nice sounds, but also communication between the brain and the body (movements), and communication between the person and the surroundings (for example emotions).

Listening to music stimulates the brain positively—music that you perform yourself, and thereby using your body as well, involves more parts of the brain and builds more connections—but music that you perform yourself together with others, builds a lot more connections in the brain!

Dentist Mariane Sørensen uses the inmu to make going to the dentist a better and calmer experience for people with special needs.

She and her colleague, dental hygienist Jeanette Tøttrup, have been using the inmu for three months, after Randers Public Dental Care
bought three inmus to use in their clinic in Randers.

“I can hear that my voice changes when I use the inmu. It gets lower, because it has this calming effect,” Mariane says.

“When I use the inmu on a new patient, I sit them down in the chair, and tell them that we’ve got a new tool that I want them to try out.”

They both work at a section of the clinic that specialises in helping people with special needs. The response they have received from their patients has been very positive. Especially because of its calming effect.

Easier treatment

The more time Mariane can spend focusing on the treatment and on the patient’s mouth, the quicker and easier it is for her to finish the treatment. This is especially important when treating people with special needs.

“The inmu gives me more time to work on a patient with their mouth open. Because it can help the patient feel calmer and more relaxed when lying in the chair, it makes it easier for me to treat them.”

The responses that she has received from her patients have been very positive.

Robust tool

Working with patients who have special needs can prove challenging, since no patient is the same as another, and everyone needs specialised treatment. This extends to every part of the treatment, from the dental care to the social approaches and the tools used. Effective treatment is individual, and while an approach might work well on one patient, it might not work on another.

“The people that I treat are not always able to say what they like and what they don’t like. Sometimes their way of saying no to something that annoys them is to push it away. And the inmu has also once in a while been kicked or thrown on the floor when I’ve used it. But that hasn’t done anything to damage it. It’s proven quite resilient,” Mariane says.