Being diagnosed with incontinence can feel like your whole world has come crumbling down.
The mere thought of unintentionally soiling your clothing is, in itself, a turnoff. Not to mention the daily onslaught of revising your bathroom habits to suit each day’s routines.
However, receiving a positive bladder incontinence diagnosis shouldn’t spell doom for the rest of your life. Whether the problem is due to old age, a chronic illness, or surgery, it’s relieving to know that you can manage it effectively using a raft of interventions like adult diapers and booster pads.
However, as with most conditions, incontinence is easier to treat when you know the cause. That’s especially if the trigger is an underlying mental health issue.
Many people have often wondered, can anxiety cause frequent urination?
Research has shown that feelings of nervousness can trigger urinary incontinence and even worsen existing incontinence symptoms. In fact, anxiety and incontinence share a cause-effect relationship that can escalate to a dangerous vicious cycle if not promptly managed.
Read on to uncover how that relationship plays out.
What Is Incontinence?
Incontinence is a condition in which the muscles regulating your bowel or bladder movements weaken, leading to inadvertent stooling or peeing.
Bladder incontinence is the more common of the two incontinence types. More commonly known as urinary or urge incontinence, this condition is marked by a sudden urge to pee followed by the unintentional passage of urine.
Most people with urinary incontinence either have an overactive or underactive bladder.
Overactive bladder (OAB) is characterized by a sudden, uncontrollable urge to urinate. OAB patients may inadvertently pass small amounts of urine over time as their bladder muscles contract even with a small amount of urine in the bladder.
Meanwhile, an underactive bladder occurs when the bladder doesn’t empty fully. It’s often caused by reduced strength or duration of bladder contraction and can lead to frequent urination.
Understanding what causes incontinence is critical in prescribing the most effective treatment.
Both overactive and underactive bladder can result from age-related weakness of the sphincter muscles (muscles regulating bladder and bowel movements). They may also be due to pregnancy, recent childbirth, and underlying conditions like prostate cancer and mental disorders.
Connection Between Mental Health and Incontinence
1. Mental Health Can Distract You
Nearly all mental health disorders manifest in disorientation. Depending on the intensity of their confusion, mental health patients may be too distracted to visit the bathroom or even figure out they need to.
Some of the mental disorders involving feces in adults include bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and severe anxiety problems like panic disorder (PD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Perhaps you’ve always wondered, does anxiety make you pee more?
Anxiety can make you too confused to figure out that your bladder is full. Feelings of nervousness may also cause all the muscles in your body (including sphincter muscles) to tense up, leading to frequent urination.
Can stress cause UTI, then?
Since stress may trigger frequent urination, many people have often wondered if it can also cause urinary tract infection (UTI). Well, it turns out there’s a connection between the two.
While stress doesn’t directly cause UTI, intense anxiety can spike cortisol levels in the body. High cortisol in your system may impact your immune system, making you more vulnerable to bacterial infections like UTIs.
2. Mental Health Increases Craving For Bladder Irritants
When stressed out, many mental health patients seek solace in alcohol. However, high alcohol intake can worsen urge incontinence.
Alcohol is a diuretic. It ramps up urine production, increasing bathroom accidents.
Alcohol stimulates urine production by inhibiting the production of ADH (Anti Diuretic Hormone). ADH is a hormone produced by the pituitary glands, which regulates the body’s fluid levels.
Other common diuretics include coffee and carbonated drinks.
Mental health is also associated with cigarette smoking and drug abuse. While not exactly diuretic, tobacco and most narcotics can irritate your bladder and worsen existing incontinence.
3. Some Prescription Medications May Worsen Incontinence
A variety of prescription medications are available for mental health, including antidepressants, stimulants, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs).
Unfortunately, most of these drugs aren’t 100% risk-free. Besides their typical side effects like headache and drowsiness, some mental health medications can worsen incontinence.
One study found that 1.4% of all patients treated with SSRIs may develop urinary incontinence.
While dealing with functional incontinence is tough enough, overdosing on mental health drugs can worsen your condition even further.
Always stick to professionally issued prescriptions and quit using mental health drugs as soon as the condition resolves.
Mental Health As A Result Of Incontinence
1. Incontinence Causes Self-Sabotaging Thoughts
When it comes to degrading adult experiences, very few compare to having a bathroom accident in public.
The thought of messing up in public can trigger shame and guilt, leading to isolation.
When you’re isolated, you miss an opportunity to engage in positive activities like socializing and working out. Spending more time alone can also encourage negative self-talk and eventually lead to depression.
Fortunately, you can invest in quality ABDL pull ups to prevent the shame and embarrassment associated with incontinence. These incontinence briefs absorb bladder and bowel discharge, keeping your outer garment dry.
2. Incontinence May Disrupt Your Routine
Incontinence can disrupt your routine in multiple ways.
For instance, you may feel reserved about venturing into the outdoors as you did before. After all, there’s no telling if urine will dribble when you’re on a date night or doing Zumba with your fitness buddies.
Incontinence may also deal a huge blow to active professionals. Indeed, it can be exasperating when you suddenly cannot sit through a strategic board meeting or stay on a long call with a high-value client.
Over time, these frustrations can develop into mental health issues.
Fortunately, underpads exist for those very reasons. Incontinence underpads help protect your outer garment from urine while keeping your skin dry.
Wrap Up
There’s an abundance of research linking mental health problems to bladder control issues.
Untreated mental disorders can cause or exacerbate urinary incontinence. Incontinence then triggers self-sabotaging thoughts like shame and guilt, which only worsen existing mental problems.
Where mental health is the leading cause of an overactive bladder, treating the mental disorder can help you recover from or better manage your incontinence condition. You could also address urinary incontinence using disposable briefs for adults.
Disposable briefs help soak up urinary fluids and hold them long enough before your following diaper change. The wearables can imbue you with the morale boost you need to go about your daily routines without the nagging fears of having bathroom accidents.
