Reducing dad’s postpartum depression
FATHERS who take paternity leave are less likely to experience postpartum depression, according to a French study. This phenomenon is likely to affect one in 10 fathers in the year following the birth of their child. In contrast, paternity leave has no impact on mothers’ risk of postpartum depression.
Postpartum depression is an illness that does not only affect mothers.
According to the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) in France, “more than 10% of fathers are likely to develop it during the year following the birth of their child,” compared with 17% of mothers.
However, according to a study conducted jointly by Inserm and the Sorbonne University’s Pierrelouis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health, taking two weeks of paternity leave could have a beneficial effect on the mental health of fathers. Their work is published in the journal The Lancet Public Health.
To conduct their study, the researchers followed volunteers from the Elfe cohort, which represents 18,000 children born in 2011 in France, and their parents, (heterosexual couples with some 13,000 mothers and 11,000 fathers involved).
After the birth, the couples indicated their intention to take paternity leave. Two months after the baby’s birth, 64% of the fathers stated that they had taken paternity leave and 17% stated that they intended to take paternity leave. On the other hand, 19% did not intend to take any.
The parents answered a questionnaire to determine if they were suffering from depression.
According to the analysis of the results, “4.5% of the fathers who took paternity leave and 4.8% of those intending to take it had postpartum depression compared with 5.7% of those who did not use it,” Inserm explained in a press release.
However, a two-week paternity leave didn’t prove to be enough to help prevent mothers from developing postpartum depression. In fact, among mothers whose partners used their two weeks of paternity leave, 16% of them had postpartum depression. Among couples whose fathers planned to take their leave, 15.1% of women suffered from it and among those whose partners had not taken paternity leave, 15.3% did.
“The negative association observed among the mothers could suggest that a two-week period of paternity leave is on the other hand not sufficient to prevent postpartum depression in mothers,” explained Inserm doctoral student at Sorbonne Université Katharine Barry.
“Despite taking many possible confounding factors into account, we were unable to sufficiently evaluate the pre-existence of depressive disorders outside of another pregnancy in the mothers. It is therefore possible that those fathers whose partner is at greater risk of depression take paternity leave more readily,” added team lead Maria Melchior, Inserm Research Director at the Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health (Inserm/Sorbonne Université),
According to her, family policies targeted at fathers could “advance equality of the sexes in the labor market and increase the fathers’ participation in the family sphere.”