New ultra-modern fathers: a research about the transition to fatherhood and perinatal depressive symptoms

Abstract

The current diagnostic relevance of the Paternal Perinatal Depression phenomenon motivates the need to study its possible causes during the transition to parenthood. Our study, therefore, has the overall objective of detecting any depressive symptoms in a sample of 50 new fathers in Palermo and check whether it could depend on the type of attachment. It is also considered whether the level of depression is related to the presence of symptoms in the areas of somatization, obsession-compulsion, and sleep disorders and whether certain differences are attributable to the age, level of education and the employment status. The research has been conducted at the Bucchieri La Ferla Hospital in Palermo; participants were contacted 30 days after the birth of their first child, in order to complete 3 self-assessment questionnaires: the Relationship questionnaire, the Beck Depression Inventory II, the Symptom Checklist 90. The simple linear regression analysis of the BDI and SCL-90 scores and those of the variance test to verify the influence of the predictors of BDI and SCL-90 were performed by using SPSS. It was found that, even with depressive levels below the average, the new fathers describe somatic symptoms, obsessive-compulsive behaviors and strong level of anxiety and discomfort. Significant differences in the symptoms of the participants appear due to the variable level of education: in the comparison between groups with respect to the total score of the BDI-II using ANOVA, results show a good level of significance. The Bonferroni post hoc analysis of the same variable showed that subjects with a low level of education are more likely to develop depressive symptoms, compared to subjects with high educational level.