Although many challenges remain, the trend towards more engaged fatherhood offers a sign of hope for male mental well-being says Svend Aage Madsen, Chief Psychologist at Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark.
The focus of Men’s Health Week 2006 is, in several countries, men’s mental health and wellbeing. This is more than welcome as men’s use of services and information seems to be especially poor when it concerns mental health.
At the same time it seems that mental health services are often not appropriate for men and need to be developed in the areas of identification of men with mental health problems, communication with men on this issue, treatment of men and information for them and their families.
The special problems with men most often focus on the realities that:
- suicide is the most common cause of death in young men and men over 70,
- depression in men in severely under diagnosed and that many men with this disease are not treated,
- men very heavily misuse addictive drugs, especially alcohol.
It is of great importance to recognise men’s special needs in these areas in order develop a better understanding of men’s attitudes to mental health and to invest in ‘male sensitive’ approaches to mental health.
Men’s mental wellbeing has a powerful influence on that of women, children and of their families’. In this connection there are two important areas that should have especial attention in future.
First, men depressive symptoms often shows up in men not as feeling hopeless and helpless, but rather as symptoms of aggression, anger attacks, and substance abuse. These gender-specific symptoms of men in combination with men’s lower help-seeking behaviour have often led to looking at the depressed man as a problem for family and society rather than as a person in need of help, treatment, and care.
Many men’s suicides and overwhelming agony in families might be results of such circumstances.
Second, men’s mood disorders related to being a father is still lacking recognition in most health services and policies. However a newly finished study in Denmark found that around 7 % of men being fathers develop a post natal depression. This is including the above mentioned ‘male depressive symptoms’.
In Denmark this will comprise 4-5.000 fathers every year, and nearly none are identified with a problem or treated.
In a study presented in The Lancet last year it was for the first time shown that in families where the fathers had been suffering from depression soon after the birth - the children were twice as likely to have high levels of emotional and behavioural problems.
There are thus good reasons for focussing on men’s mental health for the sake of wellbeing of the whole family.
On the other hand it seems men’s growing dedication, especially in European countries in the last decades, to being more engaged in family life and in close relations with their small children has a positive impact on both their families’ and their own mental wellbeing.
Therefore there are many good reasons for promoting and supporting engaged fatherhood as one of the ways to improve European men’s and boy’s as well as their families’ mental well-being alongside with the development of male sensitive understanding of depression and other mental problems in men.
Svend Aage Madsen is a member of the EMHF board.
