Sonja Kuipers

110 Chapter 4 This study has some methodological considerations. Firstly, studies that varied in population (patients diagnosed with different disorders), intervention (different interventions were tested), and quality (some results show missing data in follow-up for several reasons) were included. Therefore, the results may have decreased generalisability. It is not clear whether the study effects in autism or SMI will also be generalisable to all patients with a mental health disorder, since most of them were developed for specific target groups. Secondly, in this study, all results regarding oral health interventions for a mental health disorder are summarised; however, it is unknown whether elements are generic or specific. Thirdly, as is the case in every review, it was possible that negative results regarding oral health interventions in patients with mental health disorders are missed due to publication bias (e.g., exclusion of abstracts for conferences or study protocols). Additionally, due to the exclusion of grey literature, it was possible that we missed interventions that are described, but not published yet. This may have affected the results and overall conclusions of this study. However, to make our scoping review and the critical appraisal more feasible for clinical practice, we decided to include peer-reviewed articles from electronic databases. Further adding to this issue is that many grey literature contain information that is not publicly readable or available. Fourthly, due to the limitation of publications in English, it is possible that we missed peer-reviewed studies on oral health interventions in other languages. However, it is unknown if this affected the results and overall conclusions of this study. Despite these limitations, the review does provide important understandings of oral health interventions in patients diagnosed with a mental health disorder. Conclusions Prior literature has examined educational, behavioural, and physical interventions in order to improve oral health among patients diagnosed with a mental health disorder. An important conclusion of this review is that despite the importance of paying attention to good oral hygiene, very little oral health interventions are developed for patients with a mental health disorder. There is no golden standard that can be recommended at this moment. To date, mental health professionals, and especially nurses, are the group that support patients in their daily activities (e.g., activities of daily living and lifestyle), so they are the primary target group that

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