What Happens Next? Current Knowledge and Clinical Perspective of Pregnancy Denial and Children's Outcome

Denial of Pregnancy is a women's subjective lack of awareness of being pregnant. It can be partial (from 20 weeks but lifted before delivery) or complete (the women notice she's pregnant when labour starts). The prevalence is around 1/500 for partial denial and 1/2500 for complete denial. This article's aim is to review the literature broadly on the subject of pregnancy denial, its psychopathological hypothesis and the state of knowledge on the outcome for mothers and children.

26 references have been selected bases on a research on pubmed database and through bibliography on the selected papers.

Despite a lot of psychopathological hypothesis and some epidemiological studies, no objective knowledge can lead to know what kind of women will deny their pregnancy and how to prevent it. After all the studies on mother characteristics, it seems there are no "clear-cut" explanations on why a woman denies a pregnancy or what type of women could be at risk of denial. There are no official guidelines on how to manage the condition and care for the patient long term. The first elements of research on the developmental outcome for infant seem to show a delay in psychomotor skills and possible speech disorder. They have been significant advancement on the subject of children development after pregnancy denial in the last year but the psychological and developmental impact of pregnancy denial on children and mothers is still majorly unknown. With a clinical picture known for so long, to have so little objective information on how to manage it and on the possible consequences is surprising.

More research needs to be conducted to objectively know the long term effects of pregnancy denial on the whole family. International consensus should be found on the definition and care management of pregnancy denial.