New CAMH-led study highlights effective treatment for male postpartum depression

Low-cost and scalable intervention for Pakistani families to be expanded nationally

2024-10-02

(Press-News.org) (Toronto, Canada) – A new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), in collaboration with leading researchers in Pakistan, has demonstrated the effectiveness of an integrated psychosocial intervention aimed at improving parenting skills and symptoms of depression. The treatment was effective for male postpartum depression (PPD) in a cohort of Pakistani fathers, improving both paternal mental health and child development outcomes.

“Male mental health, and especially postpartum depression in fathers, remains a stigmatized and understudied area,” says Dr. Ishrat Husain, the study's lead investigator and senior scientist at CAMH. “Historically, the focus has rightfully been on maternal health during pregnancy and postpartum. However, we’re learning that men also experience substantial emotional challenges as they adapt to new parental roles and are in need of support.”

Globally, around 10 per cent of fathers are affected by PPD, and in societies like Pakistan, where more traditional gender roles dominate, depression rates are even higher, potentially as high as 23.5 per cent.

Published today in JAMA Psychiatry, the study A Group Parenting Intervention for Male Postpartum Depression: A Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial involved 357 fathers from low-income households in Pakistan. Fathers were randomly assigned to receive either standard care or participate in the four-month Learning Through Play Plus Dads (LTP + Dads) program, a parenting and mental health initiative adapted from a similar program for Pakistani mothers.

Fathers in the LTP + Dads program were provided with calendars detailing child development stages and activities to encourage parent-child engagement. They also attended 12 group sessions led by community health workers and psychologists. These sessions combined cognitive behavioural therapy to help manage depressive symptoms with life skills training in topics including time management and emotional regulation. Sessions took place weekly for the first two months, then bi-weekly.

The study's findings reveal that the intervention not only led to a full remission of depressive symptoms in over 70 per cent of fathers with PPD over four months, but also had a positive impact on household dynamics and child social and emotional development. Fathers who completed the program also showed improvements in well-being, and enhanced relationships with their children and partners. Children in these households also demonstrated improvements in social and emotional development. These findings echo previous trials with mothers, reinforcing the idea that addressing mental health in both parents is key to positive family outcomes.

The personal stories shared by participants underscore the impact of the program: “I used to get aggressive with my family, including my children,” recounted one father who took part in the study. "My child wasn’t close to me; he was attached to his mother. Now, I understand why. I used to think a young child couldn’t understand what was happening around him, but I was wrong. He can not only understand and feel, it also affects him."

“Parenting plays a fundamental role in shaping a child’s personality and their ability to handle stress later in life,” adds Dr. Husain. “We noticed that as a father's depressive symptoms improved, social support for both the father and the family improved. This suggests that when people receive training and education about their mental health, they are more able and willing to seek support from their network of friends, family members, and colleagues.”

One of the study’s most interesting findings was a reduction in intimate partner violence. In the study, fathers receiving the intervention reported lower scores on a measure of perpetrated intimate partner violence at the end of the treatment period compared to those receiving treatment as usual. “This data suggests that the LTP + Dads intervention may reduce the risk of such violence in Pakistani fathers experiencing PPD, leading to healthier family environments overall,” says Dr. Husain.

Dr. Husain believes that this model could have similar success in diverse settings, including Canada, where cultural and social pressures also create barriers to seeking mental health support for men. “Similar patterns of male PPD likely occur in Canada, which we know is a melting pot of different cultures,” he explains. “Stigma, cultural beliefs, and the high demand for mental health services often prevent fathers from seeking the help they need. Programs like LTP + Dads could be transformative for men in their transition to parenthood by introducing accessible support and educational services that provide a safe space to process emotions.”

Funding for this study was provided by Grand Challenges Canada and conducted in close collaboration with Pakistan Institute of Living and Learning (PILL), the country’s largest non-governmental mental health research organization. Building on the success of the initial study, Dr. Husain and the team at PILL have received $2M in further funding to expand the program nationwide. They are currently scaling the study to include nearly 4,000 fathers and their partners. This expansion means that soon, close to 8,000 parents experiencing depression will have received the Learning Through Play Plus intervention across Pakistan. The team's long-term goal is to make this program a routine part of mental health care in Pakistan. The ultimate goal is to apply this work to other populations, aiming to achieve similar outcomes for parents and their children globally.

About the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)

CAMH is Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital and a world leading research centre in this field. CAMH combines clinical care, research, education, policy development and health promotion to help transform the lives of people affected by mental illness and addiction. CAMH is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto and is a Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization Collaborating Centre. For more information, please visit camh.ca or follow @CAMHnews on X, formerly Twitter.

Media Contact:

CAMH Media Relations
media@camh.ca

END

[Attachments] See images for this press release:

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Global study highlights the life-saving impact of Guideline-Directed Medical Therapy (GDMT) in heart failure patients

2024-10-02

Heart failure is a rapidly growing public health issue that can be difficult to manage on a global scale. But there are tools that exist that can improve outcomes, such as guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT). New UCLA-led research highlights the important role that these guidelines can play in reducing mortality rates for individuals suffering from heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), a type of heart failure affecting an estimated 29 million people worldwide. “These guidelines are being significantly underutilized in clinical settings globally and there ...

New method quantifies single-cell data’s risk of private information leakage

2024-10-02

Access to publicly available human single-cell gene expression datasets, or scRNA-seq datasets, has significantly enhanced researchers’ understanding of both complex biological systems and the etymology of various diseases. However, the increase in accessibility raises a greater concern about the privacy of the individuals who donated the cells and the likelihood of their private health details being shared without consent. Previous studies on these privacy breaches have focused on bulk gene expression data sharing, where the average expression levels of genes are measured across a large population of cells from a tissue or sample rather than an individual cell. Because single-cell ...

Eyes on the fries: how our vision creates a food trend

2024-10-02

KEY POINTS Human judgement of food images is influenced by judgements that precede it Experiment tested reactions of more than 600 people making food choices Highly relevant given widespread use of Uber Eats or phone-based menus Finding could assist treatments for eating disorders or assist with food marketing Research at the University of Sydney has revealed that we don’t judge food simply on its merits but are influenced by what we have seen beforehand, a cascading phenomenon known as ‘serial dependence’. The research, published today in the high-impact journal Current Biology, was conducted by Professors David Alais ...

UVM scientist maps fruit fly brain

2024-10-02

A team of scientists supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s The BRAIN Initiative®, including Davi Bock, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Neurological Sciences at UVM’s Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine, recently made a substantial advancement in neurobiological research by successfully mapping the entire brain of Drosophila melanogaster, more commonly known as the fruit fly. The study, titled “Whole-brain annotation and multi-connectome cell typing of Drosophila,” recently published ...

Bridging the gap: how pragmatic trials can better serve healthcare systems

2024-10-02

Boston, MA – A new thought piece led by the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute with collaborators from Duke University and Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute highlights the challenges facing healthcare researchers and decision makers in the quest to improve population health in a constantly evolving healthcare landscape. The authors offer strategies to enhance the effectiveness of pragmatic clinical trials and increase their impact on real-world healthcare settings. The Viewpoint appears October 2 in JAMA. Pragmatic clinical trials, designed to inform health ...

UChicago scientists decode key mutation in many cancers

2024-10-02

Inside every cell, inside every nucleus, your continued existence depends on an incredibly complicated dance. Proteins are constantly wrapping and unwrapping DNA, and even minor missteps can lead to cancer. A new study from the University of Chicago reveals a previously unknown part of this dance—one with significant implications for human health. In the study, published Oct. 2 in Nature, a team of scientists led by UChicago Prof. Chuan He, in collaboration with University of Texas Health Science Center at ...

NYU Langone awarded $1.6 million to investigate Alzheimer’s & Parkinson’s progression through the eye

2024-10-02

Researchers at NYU Langone Health were awarded $1.6 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate changes in the eye that may indicate early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. The award, OT2OD038130, recognizes the eye as a part of the brain and its role as a window into cognitive and visual health. After the initial $1.6 million award, the grant may renew an additional two years, for a total of $4.8 million as part of the NIH Common Fund Venture Program’s new Oculomics Initiative. Oculomics is a relatively new term to describe the integrative use of technology and ...

Missing link found in gamma emission phenomena from thunderclouds

2024-10-02

Groundbreaking Discoveries in Gamma-Ray Emissions from Thunderstorms In the recent edition of Nature, groundbreaking results about the gamma-ray emissions produced during thunderstorms are presented. Overall, these findings reveal that gamma-ray emission from thunderclouds is much more complex, diverse, and dynamic than previously thought. Understanding these phenomena is crucial to uncovering the secrets of lightning. Flickering Gamma-Ray Flashes: A New Discovery Entitled “Flickering Gamma-Ray Flashes, the Missing Link between Gamma Glows and TGFs,” the paper by Østgaard et al. [2024] reports unique observations of a new phenomenon called Flickering Gamma-Ray ...

Social media users’ actions, rather than biased policies, could drive differences in platform enforcement

2024-10-02

A new paper, “Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions,” published today in Nature suggests that the higher quantity of social media policy enforcement (such as account suspensions) for conservative users could be explained by the higher quantity of misinformation shared by those conservative users — and so does not constitute evidence of inherent biases in the policies from social media companies or in the definition of what constitutes misinformation. Written by ...

How a bacterium becomes a permanent resident in a fungus

2024-10-02

Endosymbiosis is a fascinating biological phenomenon in which an organism lives inside another. Such an unusual relationship is often beneficial for both parties. Even in our bodies, we find remnants of such cohabitation: mitochondria, the powerhouses of our cells, evolved from an ancient endosymbiosis. Long ago, bacteria entered other cells and stayed. This coexistence laid the foundation for mitochondria and thus the cells of plants, animals, and fungi. What is still poorly understood, however, is how an endosymbiosis as a lifestyle actually arises. A bacterium that more or less accidentally ...

New CAMH-led study highlights effective treatment for male postpartum depression

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: