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Can't go in a public restroom? You're not alone:
Most of us don't give much thought to going to the toilet. We go when we need to go.
But for a small minority of people, the act of urinating or defecating can be a major source of anxiety—especially when public restrooms are the only facilities available.
Paruresis (shy bladder) and parcopresis (shy bowel) are little known mental health conditions, yet they can significantly compromise a person's quality of life.
We don't know how many people have shy bowel, but research has estimated around 2.8%-16.4% of the population are affected by shy bladder. The condition is more common in males.
[...]
Most of us will feel a little "grossed out" from time to time when using public toilets. But what we're talking about here is different and more serious.
People with shy bladder and shy bowel experience significant anxiety when trying to go to the toilet, especially in public places like shopping centers, restaurants, at work or at school. Sufferers may also experience symptoms in their own home when family or friends are around.
Their anxiety can present in the form of increased heart rate, excessive sweating, rapid breathing, muscle tension, heart palpitations, blushing, nausea, trembling, or a combination of these.
Symptoms range in severity. Some people who are more mildly affected can experience anxiety but still be able to "go," for example when the bathroom is completely empty. Others may urinate or defecate with difficulty—for example their urine stream may be inconsistent. Some people will sit on the toilet and not be able to go at all.
[...] We canvassed 316 undergraduate students in an online survey on shy bladder and shy bowel. Some 72 participants (22.8%) self-reported symptoms of either one or both conditions.
- We found these symptoms were influenced by particular patterns of thinking, including:
- a misinterpretation or distortion of information (for example, interpreting laughter in the restroom as being directed towards them)
- fears around potential perceived negative evaluation (for example, a fear of being criticized for taking too long to defecate, or for sounds and smells produced during urination or defecation)
- fears around potential perceived positive evaluation (for example, a fear of being evaluated too positively for a strong urine stream).
Using statistical modeling, we found fear of negative evaluation was the factor most strongly associated with shy bladder or shy bowel symptoms.
As such, people with shy bladder or shy bowel may benefit from the sorts of treatments that help people with social anxiety disorder.
Cognitive behavioral therapy, for example, is known to reduce social anxiety symptoms.
The best way to help people with these conditions will be addressing the thought processes behind shy bladder and shy bowel, especially concerns around the perceptions others might evaluate or criticize one's urination or defecation.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Citation: Can't go in a public restroom? You're not alone—and there's help (2020, January 22) retrieved 22 January 2020 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-01-restroom-youre-aloneand.html
(Score: 4, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @12:50AM (33 children)
With a range of 2.8% to 16.4%, there's no way this is any sort of "study." I'd expect such pissy research from either social scientists or the pharmaceutical industry. Now an online survey - even shittier due to selection bias. Flush it.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @12:55AM (2 children)
Need to shit it out first.
Can't do that while you're watching.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 24 2020, @04:14PM (1 child)
In my life, especially at college dorm in late 70's early 80s, with large common restroom / shower area, I've noticed that some males have a habit of flushing urinal first in order to be able to start peeing.
Maybe some people similarly need to flush a toilet first before doing their business.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @06:03PM
Taiwan (and Japan I hear) features urinals with motion sensing. They start to flush (a little) as you approach--and automatically supply the water flow that I understand some guys need to get started.
I'd heard of this "preflush" when in my 20s, (c.1980) while working with a much older engineer on a project, made a big difference to him, doesn't do anything for me.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday January 24 2020, @12:58AM (16 children)
What is not science? Publishing a preliminary result that indicates that the percentage affected may not be as trivial as it was believed? Why wouldn't be this science?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @01:31AM (15 children)
I would expect real research to come up with a solid number and an error range. You know, 5% +/- 2% , 95% of the time or some such. Not an upper bound 6x the lower bound.
And let's not count the self-selection bias or the notorious inaccuracy of "web surveys". I would grade this a fail even from high school students. Actually, I'd refuse to give it a grade - you can't go lower than zero.
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @01:38AM
I don't see why. What seems more scientific about putting a symmetric instead of an asymmetric error interval? The later seems more sophisticated to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @01:49AM
Why do prefer mean as your measure of central tendency? Why do you prefer standard deviation? Standard error? 95% CI? What were you error bars anyway? I find the intervals (quartiles, deciles) quite useable too.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday January 24 2020, @01:49AM (12 children)
As an counterexample to your restrictive definition of what qualify as science, even qualitative descriptions of what has been observed, can still be part of the science. And yet it doesn't offer error bars and whatnot, cause it has no numbers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @02:11AM (11 children)
Sure, but qualitative observations don't try to make it sound more exacting by adding phony bullshit statistics, as was done in this study.
My observations of how shitty this study was, and the misuse of fake statistics to make it sound more "sciencey", is observational science.
The social sciences have so much bullshit in their studies that they can't really be taken as science. Not when 90% of all studies in psychiatry and psychology are non-replicable, have undisclosed author biases, conceal the raw data, or involve outright fraud. And the 10% that don't have these problems are mostly independent studies that disprove the other 90%.
As one example, 45% of schizophrenics who are not treated with drugs recover spontaneously. Only 9% of those treated with drugs recover. Same with antidepressants - they double the number of patients who end up relapsing, even when everything else is held constant.
Or the study of identical twins that claimed, and is often quoted, that "proved" that schizophrenia is genetic. Never released the actual source data, but recently other researchers managed to locate many of the twins who the study claimed to have been separated at birth and found that "separation" included living with a close relative for a few weeks. Or living with a relative on the same block, going to the same school taking the same classes because they were in the same grade, meeting at each others' homes after school, etc.
What they found was that child abuse was the big factor, not genetics.
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(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @02:15AM (5 children)
I've got news for you... same for cancer research, and medical research in general:
https://www.jove.com/blog/scientist-blog/studies-show-only-10-of-published-science-articles-are-reproducible-what-is-happening/ [jove.com]
https://www.nature.com/articles/483531a [nature.com]
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0063221 [plos.org]
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @02:40AM (4 children)
I like one proposal that has come out of this reproducability crisis/ All experimental trials would have to be registered in advance, so there's no hiding the results of failed trials. Protocols and raw data would have to be made available, whether the study succeeded or failed. No more cherry picking.
And no more "editorial assistance" from drug companies that write the study, then find a university professor to put their name as lead author, whether for money or any other consideration. This is plagiarism and fraud. Universities should be required to fire anyone who is guilty of same, just like they would kick out students who get caught doing it.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @02:52AM (2 children)
Uh no.
All you need to do is fund an independent replication every time you want to fund a study to be taken seriously. If you don't, it is a pilot study. Preregistering studies is something stats autists came up with that is incompatible with science (where you always learn as you go).
(Score: 2, Disagree) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @03:11AM (1 child)
If you're doing a study, you should already have decided on a protocol, a selection criteria for your test subjects, what you are testing for, etc. Otherwise you're not doing science. Throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks is not science.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @03:16AM
Spoken like someone who has never actually done science.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Friday January 24 2020, @04:17PM
Reproducing scientific results is a waste of resources! Doing the same experiment a 2nd time, as if a published paper cannot be trusted. Especially when said paper has plenty of squiggly math symbols!
Therefore, congress should outlaw reproducing work that has already supposedly been done in published results.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 24 2020, @02:27AM (1 child)
Oh, you mean the world is full of people running around doing things to get paid, and for the most part nobody bothers to check whether they are right or wrong, they just want something to quote that backs up the agenda they are currently pushing? Call me cynical, but that's how I see it, and the closer I get to the sources of these things, the truer it looks.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @02:29AM
Oh its worse than that. Anyone who tries to do a good job is pushed out because it is way faster to produce BS than science.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 24 2020, @02:35AM (2 children)
Because the addition of supplementary data to the observations invalidates the reports of what has been observed or what?
Like "If you build a bigger Leiden jar, your shock will be stronger" invalidates the observation of "You can store that electric fluid in jars"? (when even the "electric fluid" was proven wrong as an explanation on the long run)
Unfortunately, that's not a sound logic to unequivocally assess if a particular article is or not science.
You can at best say "There are good chances for this to be bullshit", but can't categorically say "there's absolutely no scientific value in this study, because it's social science and social sciences are unreliable".
---
And finally, yes, in this case you are right - TFA is not a scientific story, it's a pos-sci story published in The Conversation [theconversation.com].
It is cobbled together by a sci-journo-creature to popularize the "pee/bowel shy" topic to un-sciency readers, while still referencing a bunch of papers published in scientific journals (if, by chance, any reader would want to further dig this shit up).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @02:45AM (1 child)
Read it. There was no "supplementary data." It was a bullshit web survey. By its nature riddled with self-selection bias.
When you start out with evident selection bias, what you end up with is not "data." It barely qualifies as anecdotes.
But it's easier to do web surveys than it is to design a study that actually requires you to get off your ass, even if it's just to go door to door and ask people, or in this case, stand in the washroom and see how long people take to enter and leave, as opposed to when there is nobody else standing in the washroom.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday January 24 2020, @03:19AM
Read what? The root TFA story is pop-sci with lotsa links.
This is exactly what I would do if I wanted to check whether or not there's something that would worth investigating further. Because is cheap and quick.
And the "answer" is to be interpreted as "Hey, there may be something here. Somebody have a look" or "Went there, saw nothing".
Anything more than that? I'd put it as "unreasonable expectations" from the reader.
So, you do want more than that? Tough topic... let's discuss how much are you willing to pay for the effort of recruiting a larger set, how to control, what should we look for and how to guard against factors that we consider irrelevant (external) for the study, etc. Like it or not, that's the world of today: you want something on a large scale, be prepared to pay for it.
Can you fault the position of
Me, the researcher? I am here not because of the salary (which barely qualifies for a decent living), but because I'm really curious and I like the social area. I'd do more, but there aren't enough money. BTW, you do realize that 'Research' is a highly risky area - most of the time we get negatives - just look at how many billions get churned in vain in Cancer research
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Funny) by martyb on Friday January 24 2020, @12:59AM (8 children)
So... you're saying it's "Shitty Research"?
=)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Friday January 24 2020, @01:28AM (5 children)
Someone in dire need of dancing lessons.
compiling...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @01:43AM (4 children)
Yep. I'd classify it as from the no-shit-sherlock department. Example:
So use the stalls with the doors and not the urinals. This way you can do your crossword puzzle at the same time, take your mind off "business", and know the extra 5 minutes is paid vacation courtesy of your boss.
That's the burritos and the chilli you had for lunch talking.
Considering how much psychiatry is based on non-replicable studies, falsified data, undeclared conflicts of interest, and outright fraud by researchers (up to 90% of studies have one of these three problems), this will fit right in.
But what do you expect from a field that had its' start in quacks like Mesmer and then graduated to serious nutbars like Freud.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @01:56AM (1 child)
Admittedly urinals are fairly bad in some places. Right next to eachther, right in the doorway, especially with people walking right behind you. It doesn't take a genius to design these.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @02:17AM
Once I was in New Orleans and really had to use the toilet, but the bar I went into had only one stall, with no door, and a shady looking guy standing by it holding the toilet paper.
I'm sure the psychiatrists would put me on xanax for not taking a dump there.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday January 24 2020, @10:19AM (1 child)
This won't help with that one:
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @11:52AM
Sure it will. They just have to leave the stall with the newspaper open to the crossword section. It would also take their mind off them being so literally anal-retentive. Of course, this is gender-specific. Women's washrooms don't have urinals, so it's expected to take longer, especially with pantyhose in an office setting.
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(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday January 24 2020, @01:28AM (1 child)
Where's the +1 groan when you need it. :)
(Score: 4, Funny) by MostCynical on Saturday January 25 2020, @12:37AM
... In a stall, with the crossword, apparently..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 24 2020, @02:22AM
With a range of 2.8% to 16.4% it sounds to me like they actually did the math on the available data and reported what they found, instead of what makes them sound authoritative.
Interesting that the data shows more shy bladder in males - my problem with public toilets is having to actually touch something, particularly with thin and normally protected skin, which is not usually a problem for male urination. I'd attribute the results to a reporting (and perhaps questioning) bias, after all: most social science is based on hear-say levels of veracity, why should this be any different?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Friday January 24 2020, @11:45AM (2 children)
I clicked thru and read and its "A systematic review" as they say. "Over the 1418 studies screened, ten were found relating to at least one review question."
Quite a few papers, especially medical, are derivative.
This is VERY popular in medical papers about, for example, dietary supplements. Also diets.
Those kind of papers are where medical industry groupthink comes from, and very slowly adjusts. Takes time for new research to get published, read, interpreted, and finally reach the review papers which also take time to be published and read.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @12:23PM (1 child)
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Saturday January 25 2020, @01:29PM
Yeah also fake journals and fake conferences are a big thing over in China right now. Academia is fairly ill right now. Not hopeless, but in pretty bad shape.