Abstract
BACKGROUND-The delusion of pregnancy is a condition where the person strongly believes that he/she is pregnant in spite of providing enough evidence to the contrary. Though previously it was considered rare, the number of such cases are gradually increasing in developing countries but the literature regarding this is very meagre in India particularly in the North-East. METHOD - In this article we report the unique case of a 60yrs old woman from rural Assam who developed delusion of pregnancy following her menopause thirteen years back, which has been continuing ever since. RESULT- A 60ys old woman presented in the OPD of Tertiary Care Hospital with feelings of movement of foetus in her womb. This was also associated with tremulousness of whole body, burning sensation of both lower limbs, palpitation, irritability and disturbed sleep for 13yrs with episodic exacerbation currently increased for 4-5months. She was a housewife, completed her family and lived with her husband and three children. She was apparently well 13yrs back when following her menopause at age 42yrs she started to doubt if she is pregnant or not. Multiple gynaecologists’ opinion was taken but that did not convince her and she continued to believe she was pregnant and felt the movement of the baby inside her womb. CONCLUSION - Although these kinds of patient visit the obstetrician first but historically and clinically this type of delusion of pregnancy is clearly different from the phenomenon of pseudocyesis. Hence treatment approach of both are also different. We need further research to explore this rarely reported phenomenon.
Highlights
Manjunatha et al [1] in his study has introduced a new concept of psychopathology related to human procreation and referred to it as Delusional Procreational Syndrome (DPS)
It includes delusion in every stage of procreation be it having a spouse, getting pregnant, delivery of the baby and so on. These are termed as ‘selfreferential’ delusions where patient himself is a part of the delusion complex [1,2,3]. Among these DPS one of the most commonly reported cases are that of delusion of pregnancy [4, 8]
In our study the patient had a completed family with three children and husband and had no undue urge of having any further pregnancy. These kinds of patient visit the obstetrician first but historically and clinically this type of delusion of pregnancy is clearly different from the phenomenon of pseudocyesis
Summary
Manjunatha et al [1] in his study has introduced a new concept of psychopathology related to human procreation and referred to it as Delusional Procreational Syndrome (DPS). A 60ys old woman, illiterate, hailing from lower middle class socio economic background from rural residency of NE part of India presented in the OPD of Tertiary Care Hospital with feelings of movement of foetus in her womb This was associated with tremulousness of whole body, burning sensation of both lower limbs, palpitation, irritability and disturbed sleep for 13yrs with episodic exacerbation currently increased for 4-5months. The movement was associated with severe bodily discomfort like palpitation, heaviness and burning sensation of limbs, nausea, increased frequency of micturition and she related these changes similar to the physical changes of a pregnant woman She felt the movement almost every day, with increased frequency at night and whenever she tried to control it by pressing one side of abdomen, it shifted to the opposite side.
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