My dearest and closest female friend is not able to have children and has never wanted anything else. She has false pregnancy symptoms that show up about 2-3 times a year and make her wildly hopeful for a few weeks. It's never progressed as far as Ruby's case- she usually lets it go (reluctantly) after the second or…

Absolutely. There's a slang term in modern psychology called "cyberchondriacs" to denote jsut such behavior, people who self-diagnose everything on the internet. The web has been a boon to people with conditions like this.

I think it's odd that there is no mention here of a heartbeat. Or, rather, the lack of one, which can be detected as early as six weeks and is distinctly heard during a sonogram. Surely, one of the many medical professionals pointed this out to her? Anna, did you ask her about this?

Yeah, I understand. But her life seems to be totally dominated by trying to figure out what's wrong with her. She doesn't have a job and every post is about her health problems. From what I can tell, she's the one who does the research and self-diagnoses. But I think her mother is enabling her, so I can't imagine how…

The thing about IAD is there are an infinite number of degrees to it. some people simply talk themselves into a cold or headache. Other people allow those thoughts to consume them. I had a particular client a few years back that actually talked herself into the symptoms of whiplash after a car accident in which she…

The commenter stated "someone on an involuntary psych hold," not just someone who has Asperger's generally. I think it is a valid concern - if someone has been adjudicated by authorities as too mentally ill to be walking around how can they consent to anything legally? Would you let a person on a psych hold buy a…

I didn't say people with Asperger's cannot give consent. And clearly, Ruby had more MH things going on than just Asperger's.

I've been seeing Facebook posts by a woman that I knew in high school, and she seems to have IAD. Reading the posts is just painful, because every single one is an update about her health. About her new symptoms, about all the doctors who are wrong, about her self-diagnoses, about the fact that she was dying, about…

"When I research something, I get really, really into it."

The thing about delusional disorders is that no amount of evidence will dissaude them. They will find some other theory to explain what is happening, but that theory won't be reality-based either.

I'm still trying to figure out why this article is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I'm sure there's some weird co-dependency thing going on with the enabling "John". I don't know what you call it, medically, but I'm calling it a "folie a deux".

Absolutely, and that's a common issue that gets brought up. The problem is we can't simply ignore someone for "crying wolf". It's jsut a part of the impossible position the medical and mental health industry is in. It's similar to the people that go to the ER solely get get pain meds. We know that's why they're there…

While I'm as much a voyeur into these kind of stories as anyone else, I feel like this article is pretty exploitative. It's clear that this poor woman is not pregnant and has some serious mental health issues, not related at all to this "phantom pregnancy." I just don't see the point of this, other than informing that…

This is incredibly sad. Really well reported, Anna.

Years ago, when I was in college and working at a walk-in crisis center, a woman came in saying she'd only just realized she wasn't pregnant, 7 months into a pregnancy. She said she'd learned that she had been pregnant, miscarried, and her brain didn't process the miscarriage. She'd continued to go to the doctor…

There is a hilariously uncomfortable episode of Louie, where Louis CK's pregnant sister comes to visit and stays with him. She wakes up in the middle of the night with horrible stomach pain, convinced that something is horribly wrong with the baby and she is going into early labor. They rush her to the emergency room,…

My best guess would be that at some point in the next month or two, when she has to change her delusions because at 7-8 months it will be obvious to even her, she'll have a "very heavy flow" and be utterly convinced for the rest of her life it was a very late miscarriage caused by all the mental anguish she was put…

When she doesn't have a baby will she have a similar reaction to that Doomsday cult people? Side step the lack of a birth at the claimed time or any evidence of a failed pregnancy (thus confirming she had actually been pregnant) and instead just start believing that she was wrong about the due date?

As someone in mental health I do sort of feel for the ultrasound tech. While normally an argumentative patient does not warrant that person being committed, we don't know the details of how Ruby acted. That said, these "phantom" pregnancies occur and dealing with them is akin to dealing with other conditions such as…