Familial Occurrence of Enuresis in School-Children.

Enuresis, while not a serious disorder in the sense of disabling the affected individual physically, nevertheless often causes great mental suffering and anxiety to both the enuretic child and his parents. The evidence from the majority of studies has shown that enuresis is a rather frequent disorder in children. Comprehensive bibliographies are found in papers by, inter alia, Zappert, Andersson, Rauchfuss and Hallgrenl-3' 4a, 4b, who showed prevalence rates for children at the age of 5 years ranging from ten to one half per cent, and with a consistently higher rate for boys than for girls. In Israel, the average prevalence of enuresis at the age of 6 years was found, in a recent study (1962),5 to be 15.5 per cent, with no significant differences between the sexes. In a survey carried out in Jerusalem schools, the proportion of enuretics was 17.9 per cent for boys and 15.17 per cent for girls, and in a study of over 4,000 school children in Tel Aviv and its environs, an overall prevalence of about 13 per cent was found in first-graders.6' 6b Two surveys carried out in co-operative settlements (Kibbutzim),7' 8 showed the average prevalence of enuresis to be from 35 to 50 per cent in 5 year olds in one case, and 30.5 per cent in children aged 4-8 years in the second one. A third study conducted in co-operative settlements,9 however, reported 12 per cent of enuretics in 7 year old children. On the whole the Israeli figures tend to show two main differences when compared with findings of overseas studies: a higher prevalence of enuresis, and a similarity in the prevalence of enuresis between boys and girls.