Is post-natal depression female-specific?
 

The obvious answer would be yes but it seems that these days there’s an increasing awareness of new dads especially being said to suffer from the condition.

It won’t be the same thing no but I won’t deny it probably happens in a different way. I always thought post natal depression was to do with hormone changes and stuff with a woman which wouldn’t happen with a man as he hadn’t carried a baby and given birth etc.

While it's not something I've looked into, I had previously just assumed that PND was at least partially caused by a "backwash" of hormones and the body chemistry readjusting ... But a quick Google lists circumstantial causes, along with previous history of mental health...

Pretty much.

I always thought PND was caused by hormone changes in women. I have heard of men becoming anxious and depressed after birth but always assumed that would be more like PTSD though? Who knows though? I have friends whose partners suffered morning sickness at the same time that they did. The human body is pretty freaky at times :laugh:

I think men can probably get some sort of...responsibility induced depression or something. Or just..lack of sleep or whatever inducing a similar condition. But PND is a uniquely female (not just female either, unique to the woman who gave birth. If..we are talking two mothers or whatever.) thing IMO. The amount of changes suddenly having a kid/another one brings on..could obviously cause changes in the whole household really, even brothers and sisters, nevermind dads.

It's slightly more complicated than that; obviously a good amount of PPD is physiological and hormone-related and can go to really severe levels like postpartum psychosis of various kinds. The clinical definition of PPD would include all factors; biological, sociological and circumstantial. The hormonal factors involved in pregnancy and childbirth are a significant contributing factor in PPD but they are not the full cause or the complete diagnosis of PPD.

It is obviously possible for new fathers to develop mental health issues, mostly down to changes in lifestyle and things like sleep disruption, HOWEVER there is a fair amount of evidence showing that first-time-dads also experience a measurable hormonal shift in the first few weeks that can be a contributing factor.

PPD is a mental health diagnosis rather than a clearly defined clinical diagnosis (one that you can carry out physical tests for) and thus, it can be described as ANY episode of depression in either parent post-birth. It's more common in women because of the far more significant physical effect of pregnancy and childbirth but those individual factors would have separate clinical definitions and would be considered contributing factors in a broader MH diagnosis of PPD.

I think the question is a bit muddy here - maybe conflating "broad" post-partum depression with more severe post-partum disorders like true clinical depression or psychosis, which are largely birth-related, but also often have contributing circumstantial factors (traumatic birth, unplanned c-section, etc.). I do know someone who developed full-blown PTSD spanning several years because of a traumatic emergency c-section.

The "yes" option here though is, "Yes, anyone can have a reactive depression in the period after birth" ... and .. well .. yes, anyone can have reactive depression at any time, for any reason, and a significant life event such as becoming a new parent could quite obviously be a mental health tipping point. If you're defining PPD as any period of depression brought on by new parenthood then my answer would be a clear "Yes it can affect both". If you're defining it PURELY as clinical disorders brought on by physical changes then the answer is still unclear as there has been found to be a measurable hormonal shift in new fathers, though from what I can see, nothing that has been specifically linked to depression thus far. It's an ongoing area of research though so the only answer is "undecided/as yet unknown" from a scientific standpoint.

It's a biological response, I believe. A woman's body goes through a lot and those chemical changes can have an affect on their mental health. I don't think a man can suffer post-natal depression in anywhere near the same way.

If a man finds himself depressed after a birth, it's probably more to do with an overt change to their lifestyle and responsibilities and a struggle to adapt to that.

...yeah, I would say pretty much this...I think that males can get a paternal depression also but there won’t be any hormonal associations...it’s obviously still something to address and I think, probably very rarely is something that’s recognised...which is sad, not only for any parent who is suffering depression and their welfare...but also for the safeguarding of the baby...

It will be different what men go through, as post natal is usually the female body .

But don't men also go through a form of menopause ? , but it's usually associated with women.

Andropause but it’s not as prominent in men as women because men’s fertility per se takes a long time to actually falter off.

But that’s neither here nor there as far as perinatal matters are concerned.