Those of you who are parents, will know it’s not easy, and often brings with it a plethora of uninvited pressures, expectations, and mood swings that can cause immense mental distress. Increasingly, but still not enough, we are talking about how a mother’s mental health is shaped by such things, with important, life saving conversations and political advocacy, growing around post natal depression in mothers. However – New research has found that fathers also experience something similar. Fathers commonly experience a drop in testosterone and an increase in cortisol, vasopressin, and prolactin hormones during a partner’s pregnancy, and shortly after the birth of their child. This hormone shift increases a father’s capacity to bond with his child. But, as with a mother’s PND, such a hormone shift can trigger depression symptoms, with low testosterone in particular being linked to such symptoms in men. All of this, amongst other things, leads to 8-10% of dads now experiencing Post Natal Depression too. But where things are different for fathers, is how society and the medical world continue to deny the existence of such a condition, even going as far as to consider it the subject of humor, incessant sneering, and the endless rolling of eyes. In fact, the ICD-11 (the World Health Organization’s index of global health issues) still fails to codify PND in fathers, despite it impacting countless millions around the world, every single day. And worse, and more bizarrely, the ICD-11 recognizes many other conditions and events, far rarer, and more absurd; that boggle your mind, and spin your head, that you simply will not believe. Let’s take a look… #menshealth #dadlife

2025-09-05