Table 5.

Limited knowledge and education about oral health

Limited knowledge about the consequences of poor oral health

1. Bad breath, cavities, gum disease, gingivitis – I think that’s what it’s called – that can come about as well. Also tooth loss, mouth ulcers (P28)

2. Like a lot of it (poor oral health) is appearance to be honest. I can’t smile at all. Like I’ll smile with my lips closed (P7)

3. I can’t eat certain foods that I used to be able to ‘cause I’m just missing basically a lot of teeth. It just takes me so long to chew food and it just takes the enjoyment out of eating (P19)

4. sometimes you have to wait quite a while and when you’ve got an abscess—I don’t know if you’re familiar with how painful they are (….) but it’s extremely, extremely painful

5. it impacts your system, impacts how you feel about yourself. If you don't feel good about yourself, you know what I mean? You won't socialise, you won't smile, all that sort of stuff, you know? Which impacts on your overall mental health in my opinion (P38)

6. I had a sister in 1957 who got an abscess on a lower jaw and she finished up with an infection in her brain and she got encephalitis (P21)

7. Well, I suppose if you let it go… You know, your whole system is going to suffer. But I don’t think mine has. So, I can’t really comment on that with any certainty (P19)

Limited knowledge about the causes of poor oral health

8. Neglecting the routine cleaning and that sort of thing (P1)

9. Lemon juice actually rots your teeth. It burns off the veneer (…….) and you know literally ruins your teeth (P22)

10. I don’t know, I love biccies, I love cake and I say that that might be what’s done a lot of damage (P21)

11. I had stomach surgery and it caused a lot of, like, acid. There was a lot of reflux and so, that started to eat away at my teeth …. (P7)

12. You know, I lost my teeth because I was a heavy smoker. Kind of like self-inflicted misery. It's gum disease of the upper teeth. Heavy smokers get it. But they don’t lose their bottom teeth, they lose their upper teeth. It doesn’t really affect the bottom teeth much (P28)

13. Although I’ve got a lot of problems with my teeth and you would say, well what have I done wrong for my teeth to be this way? But I’m not sure. I don’t know (P2)

Limited oral health education

14. Oh! He would tell me, you know, because I have teeth out and he said, “[P17’s name], you shouldn’t do this and do that”. If I went to the dentist. But I never receive anything to read (P17)

15. To tell you the truth I'm going back- every dentist I've had, I can't honestly remember any of them, giving me any literature or anything about dentistry to sort of, you know, save my teeth other than the one that told me that, um, basically I'd smoke my teeth to death (P22)