Posted by Andrew on 30/9/2009, 1:46 pm, in reply to "Incapacity Benefit and Paruresis"

Hi John I am not sure: my only in-depth experience was helping someone in Scotland deal with an appeal against loss of incapacity benefit. The main problem was that the assessment was points based, and the wording of the questions did not relate accurately to paruresis: e.g. Section – Coping with toilet needs Controlling your bladder – tick one box By this we mean you lose control of your bladder before you can get to the toilet. a) I have no problem controlling my bladder b) I have no voluntary control of my bladder c) I lose control of my bladder at least once a month d) I lose control of my bladder occasionally. As you can see it is specific to enuresis i.e. where you cannot prevent yourself from wetting yourself. My take on this is that one should tick (b). This is because of the mistaken assumption that peeing is a voluntary process; whereas we know there is an involuntary process involved as well, which shuts down under threat; this in effect leaves you without the ability to exercise the voluntary control to release and pee. Is this of any help? cheers Andrew

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