Study finds dads get baby blues, too

LOS ANGELES – They might relish becoming parents, but they can also be unprepared for the infant in their lives. They’re sleep-deprived, confused and irritable. They’re the fathers.

Discussions of the connection between mental health and childbirth have long focused on women, but a sizable portion of men experience prenatal and postpartum depression too, according to research released Tuesday.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 10.4 percent of men experienced serious depression at some point between his partner’s first trimester and one year after childbirth, more than double the depression rate for men in general. American men were more likely to experience prenatal or postpartum depression compared with men in other countries, 14.1 percent in the United States compared with 8.2 percent internationally.

“It’s viewed as a disorder of motherhood. It’s not viewed by health professionals and the public as a problem in fathers,” said James F. Paulson, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk.

But depression in either parent can affect both the couple’s relationship and the child’s development, Paulson said, adding that further study is needed.

“There have been a few very good studies documenting negative child outcomes when fathers are depressed,” he said. “That alone makes this a significant public health concern and something we need to pay more attention to.”

Paulson analyzed the findings of 43 studies involving 28,004 participants. The men were from the United States, China, Ireland, United Kingdom, Australia and several other developed nations.

The most vulnerable period for depression in men was three to six months postpartum, he found, with one-quarter of the men who experienced depression afflicted during this time period.

“We are expecting dads to be more involved in parenting than we ever have before,” said Will Courtenay, a psychotherapist and researcher on paternal depression in Berkeley who was not involved in the study. “Most dads are welcoming of that, but they don’t have any models about what a dad is supposed to do. That creates uncertainty, and that uncertainty can lead to anxiety and depression.”