2 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
View submission: Yes, Dads Can Struggle With Postpartum Depression—Here’s Why
After looking at this exchange, it’s actually probably more medically ideal to use ‘PPD’ for both women and men, and apply a different subset of illness to women post birth because there *is* an undeniable difference between being foisted upon by a new baby and your life and health suffering for it vs having that *and* your body being decimated by it. Your physical body injuries and the way it recovers from pregnancy is a whole different animal.
If it helps, it’s better to compare it to a birth mother and an adoptive mother. Adoptive mothers can never have the same hormonal new motherhood that a mother who birthed the baby does. They can both experience PPD because there is a real depression that affects any new parent of a baby, but the added hormonal affects and injuries from an actual birthing mother should have separate qualifiers.
It’s not anything special or anything anyone wants to covet or make others feel bad for not being able to achieve, it’s just a fact of pregnancy.
Comment by AGoodFaceForRadio at 13/01/2025 at 16:09 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Yeah. I'm reading this, and I hear echoes of this video about ADHD that I watched where a psychiatrist comments that if we had really understood the condition forty years ago we'd never have named it ADHD, but it's too late to rename it now so it's just stuck with this misleading name. I see parallels between that and PPD.
Yes, a new mother experiences tremendous physical changes as her body literally re-orders itself after the birth. But when we talk about post-partum **depression** I don't think we really have that particular component in mind. I think we're thinking more about interrelated psychological and hormonal changes that affect her as a new parent. It's perfectly reasonable to presume that a new father - who we know is also experiencing hormonal changes[1] during that time, and whose mental state is also hormone-influenced - would also experience psychological changes.
1: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6919930/
But of course, there's no "partum" for the father, so applying that name to the father's experience feels a lot like pounding the square peg into the round hole. And it's way too late for a name change.
Comment by TheIncelInQuestion at 12/01/2025 at 20:43 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
That's significantly more reasonable. Having language to specify the part that's being directly caused by physical changes, is definitely productive. Of course that's naturally going to apply to people with uteruses and not people without, but that's okay.