A study on Postnatal depression in new fathers! A quick questionnaire...

[rosebaines]

Hello All,

I am a university student currently researching into Postnatal depression in new fathers.

If any of you have a minute or two to answer a quick questionnaire about this topic then i would love to hear from you! The link for this questionnaire is here: www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CFB75ZD

I am studying postnatal depression and how this affects families and individual people. I would really like to unearth how new dads feel in their first year of fatherhood, what changes in their lifestyle they might encounter and how they reacted to this. I also am intrigued into how they acted and felt towards their new baby and partner; was anything different/unusual? Did he show any obvious signs of depression?

If any of you have any stories or have observed anything interesting about your partners during this first year of being a father then I would love to hear them! I'm really interested in the emotional and physical stresses/changes this could've entailed.

Can't wait to hear what you super mums have to say - thanks so much!

xxx

Men don’t get postnatal depression.

They certainly can experience situational depression linked to the birth of a Child and that can of course be serious and debilitating, but only the person who has given birth can experience postnatal depression.

Treatment for situational and postnatal manifestations of depression are often rather different - women will respond more to drug treatment while men will often respond more to situational therapy.

It’s really important that the termmpostnatal or postpartum is reserved for the woman who has given birth. For coding reasons, data collection and clarity of treatment pathways. (There’s also the feminist issue of appropriation but I’ll stick to the scientific/medical argument.)

Hi bowlofbabelfish,

Thank you very much for your response, it has been very interesting to hear your view about this.

Having done my research, there are multiple academic papers which discuss postnatal depression in men. Likewise, NCT has clear pages which are offered to fathers with postnatal depression, see here: www.nct.org.uk/life-parent/dads-and-partners/postnatal-depression-dads-10-things-you-should-know.

I know factually that close friends and relatives who are new fathers have experienced postnatal depression, so I think it’s unfair to rule this out on little evidence.

It’s been great to hear your opinion though, it’s really interesting to hear contrasting views on this