It’s pretty common for first time moms to suffer from postpartum depression after giving birth. But it’s not limited to moms, dads can also develop depression during this period. Certain types of men have a greater chance of developing depression.

Men that come from single parent families and is the only child has a greater risk for postpartum depression. While growing up they are use to having all the attention from their mom or dad. The attention cycle continues when they get married. It’s the husband and the wife, no one else. Then BANG! Someone crashes the party(marriage).

This new person takes at least 75% or more attention away from the dad right away. The dad is not used to not getting 100% attention from his spouse. The dad is no longer the center of attention. This leads to depression in dads who were always the center of attention since childhood.

To combat this, at risk new dads should form groups to talk about their new roles in the family. They should have weekly meetings. The more experienced dads could advise the new dads.

I think the best way to approach this, is to educate everyone about the risks for depression in both women and men after the birth of their new child. That way we can expect some behaviors and try to fix them.

I’ll be having this talk with my wife tonight after she reads this post. Although I don’t think I am at risk for depression, you just never know.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Dads, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.