Spit-up On My Shoulder

A study cited in last August’s issue of the journal Pediatrics found that 10% of new dads were suffering from depression.

“Postpartum depression in fathers was strikingly high and more than twice as common than in the general adult male population in the U.S.,” write researchers including James F. Paulson, Ph.D., of the Center for Pediatric Research at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia. As a result, pediatricians must make a greater effort to screen moms and dads for postpartum depression, they say.

Researchers reviewed data on more than 5,000 two-parent families with children aged 9 months and found that with both parents depressed, babies were less likely to be put to bed lying on their back, ever to be breastfed, and more likely to have been put to sleep with a bottle.

Dads depression may be triggered by the additional emotional and financial stress that comes when you add a child to a family, feelings of abandonment in their relationship with the mother (they miss the closeness they shared before the baby), or they may have previously had depression problems and the added responsibilities of parenthood exacerbates their symptoms.

What can you do if you notice your partner is depressed?

Terrence Real, a couples therapist and author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, suggests, “In a gentle or loving way say, ‘I think you have been depressed since this baby.’ Let him know that men do get depressed around this time and that even though postpartum depression in women grabs all the headlines, men are close behind. You want him to talk about it and, depending on how severe it is, you want him to get help.”