Psychological features of women with idiopathic detrusor instability.

Psychological tests were completed by 57 incontinent women with idiopathic detrusor instability, and compared with those of 22 women with genuine stress incontinence (an anatomical disorder) and published norms. The previously reported findings of hysterical personality traits, situational stresses and sexual dysfunction in patients with detrusor instability were not confirmed. Higher scores for anxiety, neuroticism, hostility, and depression were found in patients with detrusor instability than in controls. These findings, known associations of psychosomatic disorders, lend further support to the view that idiopathic detrusor instability is a psychosomatic disorder.