Rob writes:

> I read a book by John Douglas (FBI profiler) who saw three behaviors
common
> in abused children who later became violent adult offenders:
> * bed wetting
> * pyromania (obsessive desire to set fires)
> * cruelty to animals

There are two types of bedwetting.  One is called primary nocturnal
enuresis.  This results from a lack of the natural hormone, arginine
vasopressin. The secretion of this hormone normally begins between the ages
of  two and five years old.  When it doesn't, the condition most usually
corrects itself by the time a child is fourteen or fifteen. It is more
common in males.

The second type is secondary nocturnal enuresis.  The difference between
this and primary nocturnal enuresis is that a child has at one time stopped
wetting the bed but begins wetting again, usually due to stress of some
sort.

Here's a scary thing...there is a medication available for children who wet
the bed.  It is called desmopressin acetate (said to be a synthetic
structural analogue of arginine vasopressin and has been used for quite some
time now to treat diabetes insipidus.  It retains fluid in the body by
concentrating the urine.  It has the potential to decrease sodium in the
system, making children more prone to seizures.  It has also been implicated
in water intoxication, which is a sign that it that it damages the endocrine
system and kidneys in particular.  There are signs of lethargy and mental
impairment associated with it as well. This is a crime.  As far as I'm
concerned, the pharmaceutical industry has become so corrupt that only in
rare cases should pharmaceutical drugs be consumed, and then, for as short a
time as possible.

I think that a mention of bedwetting by an FBI profiler should be taken only
as a commonality he noted in a number of certain types of cases.  It
certainly is not evidence that bedwetting is an early sign of children who
will engage in the behaviors mentioned.

Siobhan