Paternal Prenatal, Perinatal and Postpartum Depression: A narrative review

This narrative review is based on a literature search on paternal perinatal depression studies published during the last 8 years. The research has primarily focused on paternal depression prevalence, effects and risk factors. Prevalence rates across the world have varied although, generally they have increased across pregnancy and the first 6 months postpartum followed by a decrease at one year postpartum. Paternal depression effects have ranged from continuing depression for the father, marital discord and negative parenting to sleep disturbances, irritability, hyperactivity and developmental delays in the infants of depressed fathers. Depression symptoms, attention and behavior problems have been reported for both their genetically related and adopted children and school performance problems for the adolescents. Risk factors for paternal depression include not wanting the pregnancy, marital conflict, comorbid maternal prenatal depression, history of depression and unemployment and stress hormones including higher cortisol levels, lower oxytocin levels and both lower and higher testosterone levels. Very few intervention and potential underlying mechanism studies have appeared in the literature, although assortative mating, emotional contagion and hormonal change models have been presented as possible mechanisms. Although the research on paternal depression has many methodological limitations including variability of measures and confounding variables, paternal depression is finally being examined alongside maternal depression as serious pregnancy and postpartum conditions.