SAD DADS & CRYING BABIES

SAD DADS & CRYING BABIES

Don't automatically blame mom: A crying, colicky baby can be just as much the result of dad's state of mind, Rotterdam researchers report.

Excessive infant crying, or infantile colic, is a common and often stress-inducing problem for parents. From previous research it is known that maternal depression is related to excessive crying, but so far little is known about the influence of paternal depression and whether fathers' emotions and behaviour also have an effect.

Psychiatrist Dr Mijke van den Berg and her colleagues in Rotterdam studied Paternal Depressive Symptoms During Pregnancy Are Related to Excessive Infant Crying. reported published in Pediarics July 2009.

They studied both maternal and paternal depressive symptoms at 20 weeks of pregnancy. Parental depressive symptoms were related to excessive crying in 4426 two-month-old infants. The definition of excessive crying was based on the widely used Wessel's criteria (ie, crying more than three hours for more than three days in the past week).

Their findings concluded that paternal depressive symptoms during pregnancy might be a risk factor for excessive infant crying… and then speculated that this finding could be related to genetic transmission, interaction of a father with lasting depressive symptoms with the infant, or related indirectly through contextual stressors such as marital, familial, or economic distress.

"Up to now, almost all attention went to the prenatal effects of maternal depression on child development, leading to the development of detection and treatment programs that focused on mental well-being of mothers," said lead researcher Dr. Mijke P. van den Berg, a psychiatrist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam.

"This study showed the importance of taking paternal factors and well-being during pregnancy into account, next to maternal," she said.

Overall, just 2.5 percent of the infants in the study fit the excessive crying criteria. But, the researchers found a 30 percent higher risk for depression among parents whose infant cried excessively.

"This finding could not be attributed to co-existing depressive symptoms of the mother, which is already known to be a risk factor for excessive infant crying," van den Berg said. It could be related to genetics, a depressed father or, indirectly, through factors such as marital, family or economic stress, she said.

In fact, a dad with symptoms of depression was twice as likely to have an infant who cried excessively as was a dad who was not depressed, the study found.

"Fathers do matter, so take care for the mental well-being of fathers during pregnancy," van den Berg said.

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Written by Dr Martin Harris, Doctor and Mohel for Jewish Circumcision Clinic in London Bris Mila Brit Milah.
www.circumcisionlondon.co.uk

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Contact Dr Martin Harris