Writings by me

I’m going to start with an apology; a while back I wrote about post-natal depression (PND) and its effects on women and whether we might be able to link its prevalence with parenting trends and expectations in wider society. If you missed it you can read it again here.

Increasingly though it appears that more and more men are suffering from PND or generalised mental health issues following the birth of their children; so, if you’re a father reading this column, I’m sorry I missed you out.

If your immediate reaction is to scratch your head in confusion, you’re likely not alone. The term is not widely known and it’s only because the conversation about mental health and men is slowly widening, that this conversation is now taking place too. But it’s clearly an issue and you are likely to start hearing more and more about it. Eastenders had a storyline this year about Stuart’s battle with PND following the birth of his first child.

According to the National Childbirth Trust, the amount of men who experience mental health difficulties following the birth of a child is more than double the amount of men in the general population, who are diagnosed. That is staggering. Other risk factors for men include age, with younger men being at higher risk, first-time parenthood, pre-existing mental health conditions and financial and relationship pressures.

Unsurprisingly, there are also many similarities between experiences of PND among men and women. For both it often goes undiagnosed, hormonal changes can be a factor and the treatment plan is often very similar with the use of psychotropic medication and talking therapies. There are similarities between the ways it manifests including making men less engaged with their children and experiencing symptoms such as fear, anxiety, helplessness, withdrawal from activities they once enjoyed and physical symptoms including indigestion and appetite changes.

That there are similarities between male and female experiences of PND strike me as obvious. Mothers and fathers are both parenting in the same context. Fathers lives change too in different ways. What we need is more information from fathers themselves.

So again this column is another way to open up that conversation amongst our Lemon-Aid readers. I’m still hoping to write and research on postnatal depression and would love to include the fathers experience too. We’re all in this parenting thing together and it won’t change or work until it works for everyone. So get in touch if you’d like to share your experience with me.