New Dads Get Depressed, Too, Study Says

(NewsCore) - It is not only new mothers, but also new fathers, who suffer bouts of depression in the first year of a child's life, according to a new British study published Wednesday.

Although new fathers are less likely to experience postpartum depression than mothers, both have considerably higher rates of depression when dealing with the changes that a newborn baby brings.

Researchers from several U.K. universities contributed to the study, published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, that noted that most of the previous work on depression among new parents focused on mothers.

Their data shows that depression among new dads is also common, suggesting that physicians need to pay as much attention to their mental health as they do with new moms.

The research, which tracked 87,000 families in the United Kingdom between 1993 and 2007, found 39 percent of mothers and 21 percent of fathers have bouts of depression in the first year of their child’s life.

After the first year, the risk of depression drops significantly for both new moms and new dads. After that initial drop-off, however, parents’ chances of experiencing depressive episodes remains constant through their child’s first 12 years.

The depressive episodes were more frequent for parents who had an earlier history of depression, who those who became parents at relatively young ages and among people who fell into the lower income categories.