If I tell you that a child or teenager with urinary incontinence generally has emotional or behavioral problems, you probably won’t find anything new in my conversation. Now, it’s easy to deduce that a boy or girl afraid of getting their clothes wet lives with anxiety. But not just with her.
Studies also associate this condition with a higher prevalence of depression, low self-esteem, irritability and ODD, oppositional defiant disorder — when young people are always aggressively confronting those who oppose them, in a kind of turbocharged and pathological tantrum. And, yes, it is not uncommon for the boy or girl who lets their pee to escape suffers from ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).
In fact, urologists know that it is not just incontinence that can affect emotions and behavior. The same thing can happen to kids who, out of nowhere, need to fly to the bathroom — a symptom that these experts call urinary urgency. Or with those who don’t get their clothes soaked, but who have small leaks of urine throughout the day, dampening their underwear or panties. Or even with those who hold back the urge to empty their bladder all the time, which is not good either.
