Masters - The Menopause Theory

The argument for longstanding infertility, age and the onset of menopause leading to pseudocyesis is one that goes back many decades to Jacobs (1942) and is controversial, as it leads academics to assume that there is a certain amount of ‘wish-fulfilment’ going on within the mind and body of the patient and that the pseudocyesis that occurs is a psychosomatic disorder. Whilst a controversial viewpoint, it is one that appears to be shared by a number of academics writing on the subject, including Yadav (2012) who describes a patient who experienced a pseudocyesis triggered by the stress and trauma of having tragically lost her son and through what Yadav describes as a wish to be reunited with her son, bore a false pregnancy. Sultana (2012) also expresses the opinion in a case report that pseudocyesis is seen in women who desperately want to become pregnant. In the same year we then saw Lack’s (2012) online article put across the argument that the root cause of the condition was psychosomatic. The stance of the menopause being the major contributor to a psychosomatic onset of pseudocyesis does not however stand up when compared to other research in the field. The studies carried out in Brazil by Caixeta (2013) and in Nigeria by Ouj (2009), show that the average age of onset in both sets of collected data was thirty three years old and in Brazil the patients were noted as having an age range of between twenty years old to forty four years old. Therefore the proposal that menopause has a direct responsibility for the commencement of a pseudocyesis episode falls down, as clearly the majority of the women in these case studies were not of menopausal age at the time of their pseudocyesis. In my opinion there is enough evidence to suggest that research is moved away from focusing on the onset of the menopause in women as being a significant factor for pseudocyesis – it may prove a trigger factor in some cases but I believe that there is likely to be another underlying cause to the commencement of the condition and that this is something which will continue to be proved true as further research is conducted into pseudocyesis.