Biopsychosocial view to pseudocyesis: A narrative review

A rare case report of pseudo-pregnancy in a menopausal female

Pseudo-pregnancy is an uncommon psychiatric presentation, often having a complex interplay of psycho-social factors making it difficult to manage. It is common to present in the reproductive age range, rarely in postmenopausal women. We are reporting a rare presentation of a 48-year post-menopausal widowed HIV-positive female with no live issues having two years of secondary amenorrhea complaining to have documented weight gain and experience of perceiving fetal movements for the past 5 months. However, she persistently insisted on antenatal care despite repeated reports of ultra-sonographic pelvis imaging and gynecological examination pointed toward menopausal changes and the absence of any live issue. This case report emphasizes the clinical presentation and management strategies for patients with pseudocyesis, a peculiar and rare psychiatric manifestation.

[Mother brain: Bayesian theory of maternal interoception during pregnancy and postpartum]

The perinatal period, including pregnancy and postpartum, causes major morphological, endocrinal, and thermal transitions in women. As the fetus grows, abdominal muscle fibers stretch, internal organs such as the bladder or colon move, and the uterine anatomy changes. Many of these changes involve interoception, the perception of internal body signals such as muscle and visceral sensations. Despite the importance of these interoceptive signals, few studies have explored perinatal interoception. We propose an innovative theory of maternal interoception based on recent findings in neuroscience. We show that interoceptive signals processing during pregnancy is crucial for understanding perinatal phenomenology and psychopathology, such as maternal perception of fetal movements, maternal-infant bonding, denial of pregnancy, phantom fetal movements after childbirth, pseudocyesis or even puerperal delusion. Knowing the importance of these interoceptive mechanisms, clinicians in obstetrics, gynecology and mental health should be particularly vigilant to maternal interoception during the perinatal period.

Pseudocyesis Leading to Folie-à-Deux

Pseudocyesis or false belief of pregnancy is the emergence of classical manifestations of pregnancy—nausea, breast enlargement and pigmentation, abdominal distention, amenorrhea, and labor pains—in a nonpregnant woman. It is a multifactorial disease and its development is influenced by many different elements such as neuroendocrine, social, psychodynamic, and cultural issues. “Folie-à-deux,” is shared psychotic disorder, describes a syndrome in which delusion is transferred to another person who is more susceptible. Both individuals are closely related or know each other for a long time and typically live together in relative social isolation. In its commonest form, the individual who first develops the delusion (the primary case) is often chronically ill and typically is the dominant member in a close relationship with a more suggestible person (the secondary case) who also develops the delusion. Treatment options should also be kept in mind as antipsychotics themselves can increase prolactin levels and can lead to amenorrhoea and galactorrhea and can further strengthen patient’s belief about her pregnancy. This case highlights that the most important therapeutic step in the treatment of folie-à-deux is separation of the inducer and the induced. Here we describe a case of folie-à-deux of a married couple in which the female had delusional pregnancy while the husband shared and supported her delusion against substantial medical evidence.