• Posted June 11, 2025

'Latchkey Incontinence' Treatments Might Include Mindfulness Meditation

WEDNESDAY, June 11, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Ever get the sudden urge to pee once you’ve seen your front door, slipped your key into the lock or pushed the remote to open your garage door?

That’s a phenomenon known as “latchkey incontinence,” and researchers think they’ve figured out how to reduce the bladder leaks and feelings of urgency induced by such cues.

Mindfulness training and brain stimulation both worked to reduce the number of bladder leaks experienced by folks with latchkey incontinence, researchers report in the June issue of the journal Continence.

“Incontinence is a massive deal,” senior investigator Becky Clarkson, co-director of the University of Pittsburgh Continence Research Center, said in a news release.

“Bladder leaks can be really traumatizing,” she continued. “People often feel like they can’t go out and socialize or exercise because they’re worried about having an accident. Especially for older adults, this feeds into social isolation, depression and functional decline.”

Latchkey incontinence is a type of situational urgency incontinence, in which specific cues set off the need to urinate, researchers said. Other well-known cues are seeing or hearing running water or walking past a public restroom.

It’s a type of Pavlovian conditioning, researchers said – years of going to the bathroom after entering your house can condition you to feel a powerful need to urinate upon opening your front door.

In a previous study, these researchers tied latchkey incontinence to a brain region called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which becomes more active when people are shown their specific urgency cues.

“The prefrontal cortex is the seat of cognitive control,” Clarkson said. “It’s the executive function center of the bladder, the bit that is telling you, 'Okay, it’s time to go. You should find somewhere to go.’ ”

For this new study, researchers tested potential ways to rein in this brain response.

The researchers recruited 61 women older than 40 who had situational urgency incontinence and assigned them to one of three therapies while viewing personal trigger photos.

One group listened to a 20-minute mindfulness exercise while viewing the photos, another received brain stimulation from electrodes placed on their scalp, and the third group got both the mindfulness exercise and brain stimulation.

The mindfulness exercise instructed people to pay attention to different parts of their body in turn, including specific acknowledgement of bladder sensation, researchers said.

All three groups experienced reduced urgency and fewer leaks after completing four in-office sessions over five to six days, results show.

The women’s improvement was similar to that reported for other treatments like medication or pelvic floor therapy, researchers said.

“Although we need to do more research, these results are really encouraging because they suggest that a behavioral tool like mindfulness can be an alternative or additional way to improve symptoms,” lead researcher Cynthia Conklin, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, said in a news release.

More than 90% of participants completed the study, Conklin noted.

“For the first time in 20 years of doing research, we got thank you cards!” Conklin said. “I think that incontinence is such a taboo subject, and a lot of people find it difficult to talk about, so they often don’t even realize that there are treatments out there. But you don’t have to suffer in silence.”

Researchers next plan to test the mindfulness therapy in independent living facilities for seniors, and hope to eventually develop an app-based tool for smartphones.

More information

The Cleveland Clinic has more on latchkey incontinence.

SOURCE: University of Pittsburgh, news release, May 29, 2025