Perinatal Affective Disorders in fathers: from assessment to treatment

Perinatal Affective Disorders in Fathers: from assessment to treatment Baldoni F.1, Matthey S.2 and Caretti V.3 1Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy 2University of Sydney, Australia 3 LUMSA University, Rome, Italy Recent research confirms that the father plays an important role from the early stage of pregnancy. However, during the perinatal period many fathers show affective disorders (like Paternal Perinatal Depression or Anxiety disorders) that can negatively affect the couple’s life, the mother’s mental health, and the child’s psychological and physical development (Ramchandani, Psychogiou, 2009; Fletcher et al. 2011; Habib, 2012; Tuszyńska-Bogucka, Nawra, 2014; Edward et al., 2015; Leach et al., 2015; Sethna et al., 2015; Paulson et al., 2016). Affective perinatal disorders in fathers are not uncommon (Paulson, Bazemore, 2010), but tend to occur differently than in women and are often under-assessed or undiagnosed. In fact, men are usually less inclined to reveal any psychological difficulty and tend to show discomfort in the form of externalizing behaviors. For these reasons, the depressive symptoms tend to be milder and more indefinite, and they frequently overlap with other psychological or behavioural problems like: anxiety symptoms, abnormal illness behaviour (hypochondria, somatization, functional medical syndromes), anger attacks and acting out (violent behaviour, extra-marital relations, fugues), relational and couple conflicts, alcohol or drug abuse, and other addict disorders. Although affective disorders in fathers were neglected by research for many years, interest in this field has increased in the last decade, and some new methods for the assessment of these paternal disorders have been proposed (Baldoni et al., 2016). Research data on the role of the father during the perinatal period, and on the specific expression of paternal perinatal affective disorders, have changed the perspective of how to assess for such mood problems in men, which will thus also impinge on the development of more effective prevention and treatment programs. The topic of this symposium, consisting of four talks, is perinatal affective disorders in fathers and to consider new perspectives in assessment of and early intervention on these disorders, taking into account the data of recent research.