'You feel helpless, that's exactly it': parents' and young people's control beliefs about bed-wetting and the implications for practice

Young people wet the bed when they fail to wake up to a full bladder. The c auses of bed-wetting are far from certain and this uncertainty is reflected in the diversity of treatments on offer and the lack of any guarantee that treatment will work in a particular case. Most young people are sad and as hamed about the bed-wetting and want it to stop, but they vary widely in th eir belief in their own capacity to influence the situation, and in their o ptimism about what the future holds. The problem can persist into adolescen ce or even adulthood, with far reaching social and emotional consequences, both for the young people and their families. In an ethnographic study invo lving 19 families 'perceived helplessness' emerged as a key issue permeatin g the whole system and often activating a downward spiral, leading to abdic ation of effort and responsibility by the young people themselves, by their parents and sometimes by health care professionals. Informed by the insigh ts gained from this study and an extensive review of the literature on perc eived control the Family Perspectives on Bed Wetting questionnaire has been developed to explore family members' feelings, degree of concern and dimen sions of perceived control relating to: effort, ability, luck, important ot hers and the unknown. This questionnaire was used as a basis for structured interviews with family members in a longitudinal survey, involving 40 fami lies attending one of nine community-based, nurse-led enuresis clinics in G reater Glasgow. It was found that only 38% of the young people were enterin g into treatment with the belief that they had the ability to be dry at nig ht. This became self-fulfilling with only 33% achieving initial success of 14 consecutive dry nights in a 16-week period (chi-squared test, P = 0.029) . Seventy per cent of young people felt that luck was important, while most parents felt that luck had little part to play. implications for practice include the need to assess the families' readiness to engage in treatment, to create opportunities for effective control and to encourage realistic ex pectations.