LOS ANGELES, July 01, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Glady Ferguson, a mother of three, prepared for her first pregnancy the way most mothers do: with birth classes, a doula and a birth plan. What she didn't prepare for was a fear she couldn't identify: a persistent worry that she wasn't going to survive labor. In a recent episode of the podcast This Incredible Mom Life, she described what that fear cost her and what made it go away.
An analysis published in the American Journal of Public Health found that unaddressed prenatal and postpartum psychological struggles carry a $14.2 billion societal price tag in lost productivity, preterm births and increased healthcare costs. More than half of that, $7.5 billion, accumulates before the babies arrive. Despite that scale, the mental and emotional experience of pregnancy remains one of the most underprepared aspects of modern maternal care.
"I had this weird thought that I wasn't going to make it. And I couldn't explain it," Glady said.
She described how the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard helped her finally get to the bottom of this intrusive thought, providing a methodology that revealed the source of her irrational fears.
"Just reading Dianetics was incredible because I could all of a sudden think, ‘that's why I had that thought that was just lingering and I couldn't explain it,’" she said.
Dianetics reveals the reactive mind as the source of fear, anxiety and irrational behavior. This previously unknown part of the mind contains recordings of past painful experiences that unleash emotions automatically and unexpectedly in the present. For Glady, this didn't just explain the fear she'd carried through pregnancy—it provided the technology that gave her the answers she had been seeking.
"I think it's a really empowering thing for moms, for dads, for parents—to know about their mind and fully understand themselves,” Glady said.
Bridge Publications, Inc. publishes the nonfiction works of L. Ron Hubbard. Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health is the all-time bestselling book on the human mind.
For more information, visit dianetics.org.
Sara Lucatero
Bridge Publications, Inc.
sdinges@bridgepub.com
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