Urgency urinary incontinence afflicts many adults, and most commonly affects women. Medications, a standard treatment, may be poorly tolerated, with poor adherence. This warrants investigation of alternative interventions. Mind–body therapies such as hypnotherapy may offer additional treatment options for individuals with urgency urinary incontinence.

To evaluate hypnotherapy’s efficacy compared to medications in treating women with urgency urinary incontinence.

This investigator-masked, noninferiority trial compared hypnotherapy to medications at an academic center in the southwestern United States, and randomized women with non-neurogenic urgency urinary incontinence to weekly hypnotherapy sessions for 2 months (and continued self-hypnosis thereafter) or to medication and weekly counseling for 2 months (and medication alone thereafter). The primary outcome was the between-group comparison of percent change in urgency incontinence on a 3-day bladder diary at 2 months. Important secondary outcomes were between-group comparisons of percent change in urgency incontinence at 6 and 12 months. Outcomes were analyzed based on noninferiority margins of 5% for between group differences (P < 0.025) (that is, for between group difference in percentage change in urgency incontinence, if the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval was greater than –5%, noninferiority would be proved).

A total of 152 women were randomized to treatment between April 2013 and October 2016. Of these women, 142 (70 hypnotherapy, 72 medications) had 3-day diary information at 2 months and were included in the primary outcome analysis. Secondary outcomes were analyzed for women with diary data at the 6-month and then 12-month time points (138 women [67 hypnotherapy, 71 medications] at 6 months, 140 women [69 hypnotherapy, 71 medications] at 12 months. There were no differences between groups’ urgency incontinence episodes at baseline: median (quartile 1, quartile 3) for hypnotherapy was 8 (4, 14) and medication was 7 (4, 11) (P = .165). For the primary outcome, although both interventions showed improvement, hypnotherapy did not prove noninferior to medication at 2 months. Hypnotherapy’s median percent improvement was 73.0% (95% confidence interval, 60.0–88˖9%), whereas medication’s improvement was 88.6% (95% confidence interval, 78.6–100.0%). The median difference in percent change between groups was 0% (95% confidence interval, –16.7% to 0.0%); because the lower margin of the confidence interval did not meet the predetermined noninferiority margin of greater than –5%, hypnotherapy did not prove noninferior to medication. In contrast, hypnotherapy was noninferior to medication for the secondary outcomes at 6 months (hypnotherapy, 85.7% improvement, 95% confidence interval, 75.0–100%; medications, 83.3% improvement, 95% confidence interval, 64.7–100%; median difference in percent change between groups of 0%, 95% confidence interval, 0.0–6.7%) and 12 months (hypnotherapy, 85.7% improvement, 95% confidence interval, 66.7–94.4%; medications, 80% improvement, 95% confidence interval, 54.5–100%; median difference in percent change between groups of 0%, 95% confidence interval, –4.2% to –9.5%).

Both hypnotherapy and medications were associated with substantially improved urgency urinary incontinence at all follow-up. The study did not prove the noninferiority of hypnotherapy compared to medications at 2 months, the study’s primary outcome. Hypnotherapy proved noninferior to medications at longer-term follow-up of 6 and 12 months. Hypnotherapy is a promising, alternative treatment for women with UUI.