If visiting the dentist is worse than a kick in the teeth, fear not, you are not alone.

According to the World Health Organisation, about 20 per cent of people around the world suffer from odontophobia, the technical name for the fear people have when visiting a dentist.

Now you can get your teeth in overcoming the phobia by means of hypnosis. Dental and implant surgeon Jean Paul Demajo, who has come across too many people suffering from odontophobia, is setting up a hypnosis clinic with world-renowned hypnotist Alan Bates.

“I want to help people who have not been to the dentist for 10, 20 or 30 years, who would rather bear excruciating toothache than going to a clinic,” said Dr Demajo.

“The aim of the sessions will be to eliminate the phobia and allow people to be able to improve and maintain their oral health,” he added.

He explained that no one “is born” with odontophobia.

“It will be related to past terrible experiences, particularly in childhood.”

This fear is quite common among senior citizens, he said.

“Back in the 1960s there were textbooks on how to strap children in the chair, hold them down so dentists would be able to work on them. Obviously, if you’re a five-year old and you’re tied to a chair, you’re petrified, especially if after anaesthetic they wake up with a mouth full of blood and 12 teeth missing,” he said.

Although nowadays it is completely different, Dr Demajo believes that some grandparents, who might have had terrible dental experiences, might still be passing on their fear to their children and grandchildren.

“People who are scared of the dentist themselves would not take their children to the dentist because they fear going there in the first place,” he explained. Consequently, such children would end up going to the dentist for the first time well into adulthood.

“Then their mouth would be a mess, a disaster,” said Dr Demajo.

Cases like these are then “very difficult” to treat. “We have to do it very slowly,” he said.

This inspired him to work with Mr Bates. “I knew through my education in London that hypnosis is used in cases like these: people are eased into the chair and actually have work done on them,” said Dr Demajo.

In a set of one-to-one, 45-minute sessions Mr Bates will treat people who wish to eliminate their fear of dentistry, of needles and other oral-health-related issues.

Mr Bates was overjoyed at the response. “It is a great feeling knowing that I am changing people’s lives, it really is,” he said.

Odontophobists contemplating attending a session need not fear their surroundings: no dental chairs or tooth-extraction equipment will be in sight at the spa clinic in Ta’ Xbiex where the hypnosis sessions will be held.