Paternal post-partum depression: How has it been assessed? A literature review

The assessment of paternal postpartum depression (PPD) is not part of the standard evaluations despite its relevance. The following study aimed to identify and describe how PPD and/or depressive symptoms in men have been assessed during the first year of fatherhood, specifically to identify the main methodological and diagnostically characteristics of the studies with a specific respect to the reported frequency of paternal and maternal depression in the first year after the birth of a child. Peer-reviewed studies published between January 2005 and January 2016, documenting depression or depressive symptoms in men within the first trimester to one-year postpartum were retrieved from different databases. 52 meet the inclusion criteria Most of them were performed in Europe, were longitudinal, and used self-applied questionnaires. Paternal depressive symptoms showed frequencies between 1.8 and 47 per cent and the presence of maternal depression showed a range that fluctuated between 2.3 and 58.05 per cent of prevalence.