Dad’s Depression Can Also Influence Child’s Health
Researchers determined certain live circumstances were related to the chance of paternal depression: living in poverty (1.5 times as common as not living in poverty); living with a child with special health care needs (1.4 times as common); living with a mother with depressive symptoms (5.75 times as common); poor paternal physical health (3.31 times as common) and unemployment (6.50 times as common).
While the findings of poverty, having a child with special health care needs, and living with a mother with depressive symptoms are not unexpected, the fact that fathers’ unemployment is by far the strongest predictor of depressive symptoms is a brand new, and unique finding with profound implications for the health and development of children in this time of extremely high rates of unemployment.
“The findings reported in the current paper demonstrate factors that could help identify fathers who might benefit from clinical screening for depression, and we believe the results are particularly salient given the current financial crisis and concurrent increase in unemployment in the USA” said Weitzman.
It’s not uncommon for fathers to experience at least one episode of major depression within the first year of a child’s life, a new study shows.
The study also found that dads with depression were nearly four times more likely to spank their babies and about half as likely to read to them, compared to fathers who were not depressed.
That’s important because previous studies have shown that physical punishments like spanking may lead children to become more aggressive, and reading to children helps kids develop language skills.
“This study, I think, is very important because it documents what happens in families when fathers are depressed. We have very little evidence about that,” says James F. Paulson, PhD, professor of pediatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk.
“Also of serious concern is the fact that living with a mother who herself has depressive symptoms is almost associated with almost as large an increased rate of paternal depressive symptoms as is paternal unemployment. Fathers play profoundly important roles in the lives of children and families, and are all too often forgotten in our efforts to help children.
“These new findings, we hope, will be useful to much needed efforts to develop strategies to identify and treat the very large number of fathers with depression.”
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Source: NYU Langone Medical Center / New York University School of Medicine