Albury man Josh Docking didn’t know what sleep deprivation was until he became a dad.
Key points:
- Deakin University research has received $890,000 in funding to help prevent mental ill-health in new dads
- A key focus of the project is identifying ways to keep new fathers connected with support
- A dads’ group in Albury-Wodonga is already championing paternal mental health with regular catch-ups
“The constant lack of sleep was the hardest part, initially,” he said.
But being a father often takes more than just a physical toll.
One in 10 Australian fathers — that’s about 30,000 men each year — experience perinatal depression.
And those in rural and regional areas are even more vulnerable, due to a lack of professional and informal support services.
But a new research project aims to help expectant dads navigate the ups and downs of fatherhood, well before their babies’ due dates.
Connecting to cope
For Mr Docking, fatherhood came at a time of significant change.
“We moved back to the regions five years ago, just before we had our firstborn,” he said.
“For us, we were blessed to have a supportive family and some connections in the area. But we’d moved away for almost a decade, so it was still difficult.”
Mr Docking said many regional dads lacked the kind of community he had.
“Especially if they were the only one in their friendship group who had a newborn baby, they were unintentionally ostracised because they weren’t able to catch up after work or go away for a weekend, like they may have been able to previously,” he said.
That prompted Mr Docking to set up the Dads of Albury-Wodonga Facebook group in 2018, which has helped more than 230 local dads connect through coffee catch-ups and late-night conversations.
“I knew some other friends who were also becoming dads, and I wanted to connect and learn from them about what it’s like to be a father … because for me it was really stepping into the unknown,” Mr Docking said.
“But it was there that I began to meet other new dads who actually had nothing else in terms of support.”
One of them was Wodonga-based dad Blair Keeble.
“When we had our first two kids, my wife could have one kid while I handled the other — but when the third came along, it was very overwhelming,” he said.
“I knew Josh previously and he invited me along to the dads’ group. It was just dads catching up at a playground, and the beauty of that was realising my situation wasn’t unique.”
Current interventions ineffective
Dad-specific support networks are few and far between, especially in regional and rural areas.
While tech-based support initiatives like the Dadbooster and SMS4Dads are helping fill this gap, research shows it can be hard to provide new dads with the support they need.
Associate Professor Jacqui Macdonald is a leading researcher on paternal perinatal mental health from Deakin University’s Centre for Social and Early Emotional Development (SEED).
“We know from systematic reviews that more than half of the interventions used to support men in the early stages of fatherhood actually don’t reduce symptoms of depression or anxiety,” she said.
Dr Macdonald said a major reason for this was the lack of research specifically addressing paternal perinatal mental health.
“By far, the majority of those interventions were developed for women, and then have been applied to men,” she said.
“And what we know is, men often experience their mental health symptoms in different ways through risk-taking behaviour, substance misuse, or even avoidance strategies like staying at work for longer or spending hours on the internet.”
That’s where the “1 in 10 men” project comes in.
Push for pre-conception health
Earlier this month, Dr Macdonald and her SEED colleagues received $890,000 to study ways to reduce mental ill-health among new fathers.
“We know one in 10 men experience psychological distress across the early years of fatherhood — and there are 300,000 babies born each year in Australia,” Dr Macdonald said.
“So that means 30,000 Australian fathers face some sort of mental health problem in the first year or few years of their infant’s life.
“What we want to do is build an evidence base to inform how to prevent those mental health problems wherever we can.”
She said the project would have three main stages:
- First, creating a knowledge bank of best practice supports for men in the years before fatherhood
- Second, examining existing longitudinal studies to identify the social determinants of fathers’ mental health in the early parenting years
- Third, establishing a set of guidelines focusing on preventative, evidence-based interventions
The project is part of an international push to prioritise pre-conception health, which aims to support parents even before they consider having a child.
But Dr Macdonald said greater focus must be placed on prospective fathers.
“We find more than 80 per cent of men who have mental health problems in the early stages of fatherhood have had a history of mental health problems, either through adolescence or young adulthood,” she said.
“However, the research also suggests that if you can intervene in adolescence, positive mental health outcomes are more likely to be carried forward into the perinatal period.”
From research to reality
Dr Macdonald said a key aim of the 1 in 10 men project was to increase social connectedness among new and soon-to-be dads.
“Essentially we want to create this whole community and infrastructure of supportive environments across young men’s life-spans, so they’re connected to support years before they enter into fatherhood,” she said.
Mr Keeble agreed it was never too early to prepare for fatherhood.
“There’s a lot of unknowns even before your baby arrives, so I think that’s where the focus needs to start,” he said.
And Mr Docking said dads themselves could help champion paternal mental health.
“Anything preventative is what we need to be working towards,” he said.
“So I just want to encourage new fathers to start their own little dads groups. That way we’ll have those intentional communities of support popping up around the country.”
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