A study was done on 121 female veterans in the United States who suffered from lower urinary tract symptoms. The researchers evaluated the women’s age, race, obstetric history, mental health history and sexual trauma history. This group of women was compared to a control group of 1298 women.
The results of the study showed that women who suffered from psychiatric disorders and women who suffered from sexual trauma have an increased risk of suffering from incontinence, specifically an overactive bladder or urge incontinence.
When the control group was compared with the women who suffered from incontinence, the women suffering from incontinence had much higher incidences of psychiatric disorders. In the group suffering from incontinence 64.5 percent of the women suffered from some type of psychiatric disorder; whereas in the control group only 25.9 percent of the women suffered from any sort of psychiatric disorder.
Again when the control group was compared to the women who had incontinence symptoms, the women with incontinence also reported a much higher incidence of sexual trauma. The group of women dealing with incontinence had 49.6 percent of the women reporting some sort of sexual trauma, while the control group only had 20.1 percent of the women reporting some kind of sexual trauma.
This is the first study, which looks at the association of psychiatric health or sexual trauma and urinary incontinence. The study was conducted by doctors at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, and the results were released online on October 22 well ahead of the study’s publication in the December issue of the Journal of Urology.
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