Clinical Relationship of Enuresis to Sleepwalking and Epilepsy

Early in the course of a research study designed to elucidate further channels for investigating symptomatic immaturity habits (enuresis, sleepwalking, stuttering) in servicemen, it was decided to seek clinical correlations of enuresis, sleepwalking, and epilepsy.* This decision was subsequent to the discovery that adolescent male enuretics and adolescent male sleepwalkers had significantly more electroencephalographic abnormality than a control group. In addition, members of both experimental groups gave histories which either had been confirmed for or were suggestive of epilepsy. The finding that the sleepwalkers commonly (61.8%) had had a problem of enuresis, and that many enuretics (26.6%) were sleepwalkers, therefore directed an inquiry into the statistical relationships of enuresis, somnambulism, and epilepsy. After interviews with an additional 200 enuretics and an additional 200 nonenuretics, it was concluded that the enuretic is more likely to have a family history of enuresis, epilepsy, and sleepwalking, a past history of somnambulism, and a