Because the physical symptoms that suggest pregnancy are universally understood and accepted, it seems impossible that a woman would fail to recognize her own gestational state. However, in 1:300 pregnancies through 20 weeks of gestation and 1:2455 through labor and birth, that is exactly what occurs. The unperceived pregnancy is a misunderstood reproductive aberration that can have tragic consequences for the fetus and in extreme cases can result in the death of the neonate leading to criminal charges. Current research recognizes this is a clinical syndrome with a patterned presentation of symptoms and behaviors that meet diagnostic criteria and are closely related to clinical disorders involving dissociation.

Diana Barnes is an internationally recognized expert on issues pertaining to women’s reproductive mental health across the lifespan and has been in clinical practice for over 30 years. She wrote the guidelines for the assessment and treatment of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders for the Perinatal Advisory Council of Los Angeles County and is the editor and contributing author of the definitive text Women’s Reproductive Mental Health Across the Lifespan. A past president of Postpartum Support International, she sits on their Advisory Board and is also a board member of the North American Society of Psychosocial Obstetrics and Gynecology. She is widely published in the academic literature including Midwifery Today and the Archives of Women’s Mental Health. Dr. Barnes is frequently retained by legal counsel on criminal cases involving women who have harmed their child when in the throes of maternal mental illness and Chairs the special interest group on forensics and maternal mental illness for the International Marce Society. She is the 2009 recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Eli Lilly Foundation and practices in Los Angeles, California.