NHS to offer mental health treatment for new fathers

[happydappy2]

The Times is running this story, apologies I can’t do a clicky link. There is no mention of women suffering PND or PTSD.....it’s all about the poor men’s feelings.......

" if you can reduce the fear of social services involvement."

Re women accessing services>> this is a massive issue.
I didn't seek help with quite severe issues post natatlly due to concern about SS.

I am not convicnced that when fathers are ill there is the same dismissal and looking over the shoulder becasue actually the woman is now only a unit that exists to look after children and the priority is that she can function well enough for that. This seems very common when women have kids, Concern for them as people goes, it's all to do with are the children OK.

Is my experience obviosuly not al HCPs are identical!

I think it's great

But hey, continue to allow maternity services be the bastard stepchild of the NHS as long de menz are okay.

No to calling it PND or otherwise drawing equivalence with the experiences that women have around pregnancy, birth and post natally.

It's appropriation of terminology belonging to women again, though, isn't it. Or, more innocently, a failure to recognise that the aetiology of "feeling bloody awful after a new baby arrives" really isn't the same in men and women.

Had routine checking of spousal MH been offered when DC1 was born, my own postnatal health would have been immeasurably better. DP suffered a complete breakdown following my traumatic delivery and became anxious, depressed and eventually psychotic in the months following the birth. Huge triggers from early trauma for him, which could have been coaxed out of him had someone had the presence of mind to check. My immediate postnatal period was spent trying to stop him killing himself while banging on doors trying to access help for him which I was told would only be available if he asked for it himself. In the end, it was his employer who found a way in, through the official channels of supervision, so an established structure of enquiry and feedback, in which he felt safe to open up and accept the help offered. If a postnatal check was scheduled for new dads as a matter of course, irrespective of whether they were deemed 'at risk' , I imagine take-up of services and support would see an exponential uptick, and new mothers' wellbeing would improve respectively.

I can imagine there wouldn't be so many cases of PND if maternity services weren't so absolutely dire in so many places, not to mention post-natal wards where women who've just given birth are expected to share sleeping space and toilets with all these partners. Also reading the Relationships board there are a startling number of women whose mental health is being severely effected by the fact that they've procreated with a man who's a total fuckwit.

So now women can't have privacy and good treatment during labour, the men get to hone in on that, too, and after birth but they can't even have PND to themselves anymore! FFS.