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Daddy Baby Blues?

Understanding How Postpartum Depression Affects New Dads

By Gina Roberts-Grey

Our growing concern for the mental and emotional health and well being of new mothers has sparked a widespread awareness campaign aimed at treating postpartum depression. For years, previous generations dismissed a new mother's "sadness" or depression by associating it with needing to adjust to having a new baby or missing the attention received while being pregnant.

Fortunately, the very powerful and compelling symptoms of postpartum depression (PPD), or the baby blues, experienced by mothers of diverse social, ethnic and economic climates lifted the veil off this potentially dangerous situation, paving the way for parents to openly seek treatment for postpartum related symptoms. Removing the stigma associated with suffering from the baby blues has sparked society's increasing awareness and commitment to ensuring mothers receive supportive treatment for PPD.

In the days and weeks following the birth of a baby, family members, friends and health care professionals watch for indicators that a new mother may be experiencing some level of postnatal depression. Thankfully, women have the benefit of organized support groups, compassionate friends and a trusted medical team with whom they've already entrusted their care to during pregnancy. While turning caring, watchful eyes to the complete health of new moms and their children is invaluable to helping growing families successfully transition through the journey of childbirth and into parenting, we are now learning that new fathers may also require similar patient nurturing and support.

Although postpartum depression has traditionally been associated as being experienced by women, researchers and mental health experts are now realizing fathers also can suffer from PPD. As in the case of mothers who experience PPD, we are now understanding a child's relationship with a father grappling with PPD can be noticeably affected. A 2000 study conducted by the University of Oxford found that about 3 percent of fathers exhibited signs of depression after the birth of a child. The same study indicated that approximately 10.2 percent of mothers experience symptoms and feelings of postpartum depression.

British researchers headed by Dr. Paul Ramchandani, a psychiatrist at the University of Oxford, recently released a report that paternal PPD can affect a child's early behavior. In the report published in The Lancet

Want to see more?

• Postpartum Depression Series
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• Talk about it!

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