An article from The Nursing Times where Andrew Smith, chair of UK Paruresis Trust, explains what paruresis is and how people are affected by it

A significant minority of cases of paruresis are severe i.e. they cannot pee away from home, and they experience retention even there. Their day-to-day life is very stressful, so much so that it interferes with effective therapy. Such cases find either temporary or permanent relief from symptoms by learning clean intermittent self-catheterisation. Just knowing that the catheter is in one’s pocket as a fool-proof last resort, can in some cases eliminate enough of the anxiety to allow the individual to do without it. The catheters are disposable, single-use, sterile, and self-lubricated. In our experience infections in men are rare; however infections among women are more common for physical hygiene reasons.

It should be recognised that urinary retention by such individuals is absolute: the effect of the autonomous nervous system being to relax the detrusor and close the internal sphincter, hence however full the bladder, the sphincter will stay closed.

The following article by continence nurses makes the case for personal control of self-catheterisation in order to enable a normal daily life. As such it can enable an individual to undertake a therapeutic process of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy; also to undertake air travel since without a catheter, the individual would be in retention until arrival at a safe destination such as a hotel.