Apparently men can get PND too

[ItsLikeRainOnYourWeddingDay]

No - they get depressed. They cannot have PND. The clue is in the bloody name - POST NATAL. No man can ever be post natal.

https://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/olivia-spencer/postnatal-depression-gay-bb_5857968.html

I do not think this is all there is to PND, just that a medical narrative is absolutely not all there is to it.

I have met many women who had PND. Many but not all seemed to have shitty partners.

This happens a lot with women and MH, being diagnosed with MH when the problem is shitty lives, shitty material reality, shitty men...

I suffered from peri natal depression and anxiety,

I am sure men can and do get depressed when their partners are pg or have given birth,

However I agree with those who say a different name would be useful.

Peri natal depression (ante and post) is under funded, under recognised, under treated etc. The numbers of women who suffer is high, and the numbers who do not get any help is high.

To categorise similarly is going to take a large focus off pregnant women and women who have given birth TBH.

It feels like the corollory of "women do it too"! So when it's a conversation about violent crime, "women do it too" and when it's a conversation about this, "men suffer too"! Yes I'm sure they do, is it really a good idea to take the speciifc pregnancy and birth related mental health issues that really have only for a short amount of time been recognsied at all, and generalise them out?

I am also ??? at the idea that hormones have nothing to do with any of this. Seriously? My docs said that it was hormonal, I had no previous MHPs and was pregnant so not much to adjust to (at least at the beginning) and I went a bit mad, worsening to very mad with the second one, again worsening / coming on when I was pregnant.

So, not hormonal? That's a fact is it, you can tell that to me for sure, can you? Imply that there must have been something else going on that I'm too lacking in self awareness to understand, or something? OK well awesome.

I am not sure that we are even in a place yet where ante natal dpression is widely known as a "thing".

Just googling, one site says it's only in the last 20 years that it has been recognised. That is nothing really, TBH. How much do we know about it when it's that amount of time? And for PND people still talk about the "baby blues" and expect women to get on with it - although attitudes are slowly changing.

To state categoorically that there is no hormonal basis, and men and women must be treated exactly the same in this regard does feel a bit like, women have had a little attention, let's put it back where it belongs now.

There is an attitude that says that pregnancy and childbirth are a "nothing" - the drawing equivalence between the person who has been pregnant and given birth and the person who is their partner feels a bit, it feels a bit dismissive.

It reminds me of the way some people say "why not just have the baby" about abortion, or scrub surrogates out of the picture. Carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth is not a "nothing", I feel it will not help women to embed this idea further.

I think if you want to talk semantics then Post partum Depression is exclusively female, and post natal could be assigned to anybody in the aftermouth of birth. However, I think Post partum depression and post natal depression have been used interchanagbly for too long for it to be of anyone's benefit to start diagnosing men with post natal depression, and PND/PPD should be kept for women as there is a clear hormonal component to it that is exclusive to women who have recently given birth (along with sleep deprivation, traumatic birth etc).

There are already diagnoses available that cover what men might experience, it is well known that major life events/ changes can cause depression, are we going to start labelling all depressions specifically...Post marriage breakdown depression, post redundancy depression, post dog dying depression...it seems a little unnecessary. Also there is already Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that recognises the specific effects of witnessing a traumatic event (particularly where a loved ones life my have been at risk). Why not use these terms for the men.

Oh shit. I'm really depressed after discussing in great detail and planning for kid (plus many, many promises) don't want it and can up shove it back up or give it away?

Darling, I don't have a 'Lady Garden', but if I did, I'm sure I wouldn't make a big deal about it and it would be more fucked than yours, anyway. Also, my teeny man nipples are very sore after trying to get 'YOUR' baby latching on. Even my mum said baby should be potty trained by now and eating her yummy shepherd's pie (that you can't make) - even though baby 2 weeks old.

Sorry, rant. Personal pronouns - I'm female.

Sardine sounds like you had a tough time. I think it is hard for people who have never been totally overwhelmed by a change in their hormone levels, either with mental or physical symptoms, to really "get it".

I have been very fortunate in that so far (DD is 3 months old) my mental health has been great ante and post natally, however from week 5 of pregnancy until briefly after giving birth I felt like I had been poisoned, I was nauseous for the entire pregnancy (vomiting from week 8-17 and projectile in labour), whatever hormones my placenta was churning out did NOT agree with me!! I imagine you felt the psychological equivalent of my nausea and vomiting

It is really important that Post partum/ post natal depression is recognised as the specific condition that it is. Yes it is complicated by the intertwining of changes in gender roles, and trauma in birth, but if the hormones don't agree with you, then that is a purely physiological thing, and not something that men can experience, and thus the diagnosis should not be high-jacked.

How on earth can anyone claim confidently that since men don't give birth they can't be hormonally affected by parenthood?

Fathers reasonably often love their children. Ergo, they have some sort of evolutionarily-determined mechanism causing them to be emotionally involved with children they didn't give birth to.

My boobs went up two cup sizes when my niece was born, and I didn't give birth to her, either.

I'm not (not) saying the perinatal experience is the same for men as for women. I AM saying that there's no reason why a man shouldn't have an episode of depression triggered by becoming a father.

Anyway, if you belittle another person's suffering, you may or may not be a feminist, but you're definitely an arse. Sorry.

Was that aimed at me?

When I was in a right state after induction, having had no pain relief, in an awful lot of distress, and ending up with an emergency cs, the midwife and the others who came in, all kept asking dh if he was ok.

I am concerned that if these "women only" labels are generalised out, we will lose the scant support we have at the moment.

Society is set up to help men first, in all but a few areas, pregnancy and childbirth being one. If we open the focus up to be shifted, I think a lot will be lost.

I can't see a problem with saying this can be a difficult time for men too, and giving info etc.

Not saying it is ‘not hormonal’ or that there are definitely not any physiological elements to it.

What I am saying is that the best medicine can currently say is that it is thought to be hormonal.

There is a willingness generally in MH care to medicalise without reference to society (the medical model) and this is so even though the physiological causes/processes of MH problems/symptoms (including PND) are largely a mystery.

So to be absolutely clear I am not in anyway saying there are no physiological factors.

I am highly sceptical of pronouncements of ‘it is hormonal’ or ‘it is a chemical imbalance’ by doctors though, which may be said for a variety of reasons (not all bad - ‘instruction not to blame yourself’), but are both not able to be known with any level of certainty close to those pronouncements of fact.

Someone else said it was not hormonal, not you:

"Hormones are not mentioned at all in the possible causes, and this perception is actually debunked in the myths, along with the misconception that it is an exclusively female issue."

I agree that often mhps and drugs are a quick cheap answer, rather than looking at cause. And that with women we are often assumed to be unstable anyway, with a raft of physical conditions being left untreated in favour of assuming we're imagining it.

OTOH to dismiss as pp did as a "myth" that hormones can play a part is strange.

For me, the only change was I got pg, and with no previous mh issues, I lost my marbles. I was depressed, but also rather mad, like properly bonkers. Clearly something was going on, and I can't be the only one.

Plus. We are supposed to accept that "baby blues " exists, and that men can get hormonal changes that cause mood change, but women do not? So baby blues yes, pp yes, any other mhps, nope, can't be hormonal...? That feels very wonky.

The more I think about it the more odd it is.

Generally we accept that hormones can have an effect on mood, a significant effect.

Teenage / pubescent mood swings
Pms
Menopause
Young men and testosterone have a few effects

But the hormonal changes during pg and after childbirth are immaterial. Except for pp and " baby blues".

It doesn't follow, surely.

Unless your point is, to say that it's the same for the partner.

That was a general "your" at the end, not aimed at anyone.

@SardineReturns - no, no, I wasn't aiming at anyone. Certainly not you.

I had a really bad dose of PND too - not that it came out of the blue - and, yes, I've been really lucky that things have moved on and that the perinatal health services knew I was At Risk and therefore I could access support. It was still bloody awful though, and I'm not out of the woods yet.

I just meant to say - and perhaps I was more strident than I needed - that perhaps it's better to have solidarity with others who suffer, rather than implying that another person's suffering isn't important.

Yy to all of that.

I’m pretty confident that what is called PND now may actually be a lot of different things and lumping it all together is quite harmful because I strongly suspect the different things need different approaches.

There are a lot of judgements made in service provision too not least that ‘middle class women with husbands’ need no help or support and that ‘young, poor, single mums’ are essentially incapable of looking after babies and so must be policed by increasingly inventive methods such as hiding social workers in ‘support initiatives’ (yes family nurse partnership I am looking at you there).

What a lot of women describe when talking about postnatal care would be described as medical negligence if it happened to men IMO.

I very much doubt that hormones could play much of a role in depression for men after a child has been born. There are indications hormones change, but I expect it is primarily just a rebrand of ‘struggling to come to terms with being a father’ that has been around for an age and it has been rebranded as ‘PND’ so it can be weaponised for the section of men for whom ‘struggling to come to terms with being a father’ actually means ‘struggling with a woman machine providing fewer services to me’.

Cynical...

I’m not saying there aren’t reasons to struggle with fatherhood that are not the above, more that women have been listening to ‘what about me?’ from men after a baby is born for an age.... this will be a gift to those men...

Even ‘hormones’ is such a loaded word... I keep thinking as I type about all the myriad of ways ‘hormones’ is used to dismiss women....

Partners came to our antenatal classes. Partners can get pnd. I think it’s pretty accepted that its the period following the baby’s birth not the period following giving birth to the baby. It’s a mental health issue and shouldn’t be ignored.

Someone else said it was not hormonal, not you:

"Hormones are not mentioned at all in the possible causes, and this perception is actually debunked in the myths, along with the misconception that it is an exclusively female issue."

...

OTOH to dismiss as pp did as a "myth" that hormones can play a part is strange.

That was me. I was quoting from the NHS website.i thought I had made that quite clear in my post.

Link here.

Conversely, as the conversation develops I have noticed a few things:

1. some worthwhile arguments for (and a deeper understanding of) the potential benefits of a separate diagnosis name for men
2. some shameful venom directed at men who dare to disclose suffering, when they haven’t gone through child birth.
3. that the MH stigma is alive and well: it appears that if one can blame it on hormones instead of ‘psychological or situational factors’ then it is less stigmatising.

Offred yes agree with all of that.

Women are often left to "get on with it" with pain relief, follow up etc that would not be acceptable with other similar injuries or operations. The birth thread on here was a real eye opener, so many women with issues that effected their quality of life massively and for years, dismissed, ignored.

The vaginal mesh scandal is a great example of the attitude in a lot of the medical profession when it comes to women / reproductive stuff.

The attitude of society towards women, mothers, motherhood and lack of support is going to feed in.

I find it inappropriate for one poster to tell other posters that they are feeding into mental health stigma when they relate stories of their own mental health problems,

And to inform them that they don't know their own minds (ha!) and are essentially un self aware and, not sure of the word. Vain? Concerned with their self image?

Dismissing the tesimony of women about their own lives, is rife in medical practice, and in wider society as well, and is a misogynistic move.

When I was suspected of having this it was "post adoption depression" - we both adopted so DH could have got this too.
You could call it something else for men I suppose?

I find it inappropriate for one poster to tell other posters that they are feeding into mental health stigma when they relate stories of their own mental health problems,

I find it inappropriate for someone to think they have absolute authority of thoughts and opinions on MH because they relate personal stories of their own mental health issues.

Funnily enough - there’s quite a few of us about... but the stigma means we often keep quiet about it.

So you honestly think it's OK to tell posters on a MH thread who are telling their stories that they are using hormones as an excuse and are feeding into mental health stigma.

I mean WTF that is an AWFUL thing to say. Are you serious?