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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The relationship between gender and the psychological impact of urinary incontinence on older people in Hong Kong
— an exploratory analysis | | Author(s) | Jik-Joen Lee |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 24, part 4, July 2004 |
| Pages | pp 553-566 |
| Source | http://journals.cambridge.org/ |
| Keywords | Incontinence ; Stress ; Older men ; Older women ; Hong Kong. |
| Annotation | Adult incontinence violates social norms and values, and undermines the personal expectation of being independent, dry and clean. Urinary incontinence (UI) is widely known to have a psychological impact on older people. This paper reports the findings of a study of the impact of incontinence on a sample of 214 older people in Hong Kong. Several of the results concur with those of studies in western countries. It was found that the prevalence of UI increased with adult age, and that the condition affected women more than men. More than half of both men and women respondents had suffered for less than 3 years. It appeared that the period of suffering was not strongly associated with the level of incontinence. There were no significant differences between duration and level of incontinence, or between health status and years of suffering. About 80% of the incontinent respondents had negative psychological impacts. There were significant differences between the sexes in the impact of UI: older men found incontinence more stressful than their women counterparts; and older men more often strove to hide their incontinence from their friends. The study is not able to conclude that the psychological suffering of those who reported more negative effects is greater than that of those who reported fewer. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-040716003 A |
| Classmark | CTM: QNH: BC: BD: 7DR |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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