Dads get the baby blues too

One in 10 mothers will suffer from post natal depression, a severe but usually temporary condition. Now a new study suggests that almost as many fathers experience similar mental problems after the birth of their child.

The study was a "meta-analysis" - i.e. it is a study of previous studies designed to extract new information from the data gathered by grouping the findings together in new ways.

43 different studies covering nearly 30,000 individuals were reviewed. Results showed that:

• 10.4 per cent of fathers experienced depression in the first year after birth
• Depression peaked in the 3-6 months after birth, accounting for a quarter of all cases
• American fathers experienced the highest rate of depression (14 per cent versus 8.2 for the rest of the world)
• There is a small link between depression in the mother and the father
• Some men are also affected by depression during the mother's pregnancy

The authors of the study note that paternal depression is most often seen in first-time fathers, and suggest that health services should be more pro-active in identifying them.

This is important because of the impact that the parent's mental state can have on the child's wellbeing : "More efforts should be made to improve screening and refer­ral, particularly in light of the mount­ing evidence that early paternal depression may have substantial emo­tional, behavioural, and developmental effects on children."

Many have attributed the cause of depression in mothers to the effects of hormones generated by pregnancy and breastfeeding, but these findings suggest that there may be other factors at play. The birth of a child changes the parents' lifestyles dramatically, emotionally, physically and financially. These factors may play a part in affecting the metal state of both mothers and fathers.

The study was carried out by James Paulson of the East­ern Virginia Medical School in the USA, and is published in the May 2010 issue of the journal JAMA.

This article was published on Wed 19 May 2010