 This episode of the podcast is supported by Audible. You can download and listen to the world's best storytelling. I use it all the time to and from work. You can listen to audiobooks, original series and more on their free app to get your free 30-day subscription, which includes a free book. Click on the link in our show notes and enjoy. Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. Today I had a great guy come in and speak to me, Dr. Viren Swamy, who is a professor of social psychology at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. And we talked about paternal post-natal depression, depression amongst fathers and not often talked about so many fathers and men are going through this. It was eye-opening. So we had a deep conversation. We talked around all the issues, really powerful and I hope you enjoy it. Hey, it's Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. Cool, I'm alive. How are you doing? Good, I'm well. How are you? Good, thanks for coming. Did you find it okay? I got very, very lost. I don't think I've ever found it even with very clear instructions. I know, the Google Maps just doesn't work as well nowadays. It sent me to a different place. It sent me to a car park. Oh, unbelievable. Everyone always gets lost now. I've asked the same question to like the lost. It doesn't make me feel any better. I know. So, what's your background? What do you do? My official title is I am professor of social psychology at Anglia Ruskin University. What that simply means is that I am a researcher and a lecturer in social psychology. I study all kinds of things, everything from body image to why people voted Brexit. But one of the things I'm particularly interested in is what we call mental health literacy, which is essentially how non-scientists think about and their beliefs about mental illness. The kind of background here is that I became a dad about them just over two years ago now and after my son was born then, I struggled with my own mental health and that got me interested in the research that existed on postnatal depression, particularly in men. And there isn't much, is there? Well, there isn't very much at all. Although, I think what exists in terms of research knowledge is very different to what exists in the public realm. Obviously, yeah. So, in very simple terms, the public generally don't believe that postnatal depression affects men, whereas in my academics, we know it does. Interesting. I was speaking to a friend of mine to say I was having this podcast and she was like, what are you talking about? This is complete rubbish. I won't mention who she is, but she knows who she is. No, it's definitely a big problem. Just winding back a little bit, what was it like having your first kid and what were you expecting? I'm not sure what I was expecting. Lots of people ask me this question, like what did I expect before my son was born? I'm not sure I had any real expectations. I kind of went into it more or less blind. I think that was part of the problem really, that I kind of had no idea what to expect. So I kind of took each day as it came. And I think, to be honest, I think looking back, I think even if our son was born, I think I was probably already struggling. It's only had a lot of anxiety. Like during the pregnancy? Yeah, during my wife's pregnancy. Like a lot of anxiety is normal. Like lots of dads will worry about the future and money and all kinds of things. My anxiety kind of got to the point where I was at times, not all the time, but at times I think really struggling to understand what was happening. I would worry about leaving the house. I kind of almost treated my wife's pregnancy as if it didn't exist. And I treated it like she was just a completely everyday person with no pregnancy involved. Yeah, yeah. It's easy. Yeah, you're not really prepared so much. I've got two kids and my classic and my friends will laugh at me, but my classic line is always like, life's never gonna change. Like it's not gonna change. Because you know, before when it's just you and your wife or your husband or whatever, you're out, you can sleep in, you can like go partying and all of those things. And you don't really expect it to change or you don't want it to change and you don't want to let it change. I think it's both, isn't it? It's not wanting it to change and not also not expecting it to change. And obviously when it happens, change comes very, very quickly. I have this thing like it's really weird that the kind of setup in the UK is you have to give birth and you're told go home. It's all yours now, that's it. Yeah, yeah, just crack up everything. Yeah, that's essentially what happened with us. Because also we don't have, it was being to my colleague Maria just before. Back in the day, like we used to, the villages used to bring up kids. And now if you're in a city, you might have your parents nearby, you might not. I think you're lucky if you have your parents nearby. But most people are quite estranged and we don't have that kind of natural support network. No, it's true, you just like crack on and you're in the- I think part of the problem as well though is that society as a whole tells us that when your child arrives, this is gonna be a magical moment. It's gonna be this momentous moment and everything will be right. You'll understand instantly what everything is gonna be perfect. I remember the first time I held my son properly. He must have been a couple of minutes old at this point. I didn't really feel anything. It's a strange feeling looking back now. I remember there's a photo of me, someone took a photo of me holding my son for the first time and I look at that photo and I'm doing all the outwardly, I'm doing all the kind of things you'd expect me to do. I'm smiling, I'm looking at the camera. You'd think I was happy. Inwardly I felt completely numb. There was no feeling, there was no emotion. And it took me a long time to understand that that was a symptom in itself. That when you experience something like that, you'd hope to feel something but I wasn't really feeling anything. What's also interesting is that you have no idea that other dads probably are feeling exactly the same. Cause no one really talks about it. And I think it's very common. Cause again, with my kids as well, it's not like this sudden thunderbolt of like, oh my God, I can't love this kid as much as all of these things. So I think we definitely need to talk about it more. I'm assuming post-nation depression is researched or very well researched in mothers. Yeah. So there is a ton of research firstly showing that it exists and what we do about it and what the effects are and all kinds of things. So it's very, very well researched. And what are the symptoms if we're talking about mothers? So it is clinical classic depression. Sorry, major depression. Most people would be having an awareness of what depression is. So it's essentially a lack of persistent enjoyment of life or any kind of things that you enjoyed in the past typically associated with low self-esteem. Also commonly associated with low energy. Okay. So if it's diagnosed in the period after a birth, usually up to a year after the birth of a child, then we call it post-natal depression. So it's just depression. I don't mean just depression, but it's clinical depression following the birth of a child. Okay. And you said, so for a year, how long does it last for? Well, there is no cut off in that sense. If a person isn't treated can last for several years with men, what we see is often it ends up in, in sometimes not always, but sometimes ends in suicide. So it doesn't always mean that it just gets better over time or there is a clear cut off. And if it is prolonged, most therapists would consider it major depression again. It's an effect on the, on the baby with the mothers. So if the mother's depressed. Yeah. So if the mom's depressed, they look less likely to interact with their child in the first place. And for example, they're less likely to breastfeed or they breastfeed for shorter durations. They're also less likely to interact positively with their child playing, reading, that kind of thing. In the longer term, there's also an impact on the child outcomes. So the child is much more likely to develop behavioral and linguistic problems, particularly in late childhood. So a whole host of outcomes, negative outcomes, both in terms of the mother child attachment, but also in terms of the child itself. Is there a difference do you find between whether it's a boy or girl? Not in terms of the mom's symptoms. So the symptoms in terms of the mom's exactly the same. There is some research to suggest that boys, in particular boys who have a mom who is clinically depressed are more likely to develop behavioral problems in later life in particular. It's thought that because boys don't get the nourishment early in life, they're much more likely to replicate those difficulties, those mental health difficulties in later life. And they just, and they remember this from the first year? It's such a much that they remember they just haven't, I think one of the problems if the mom hasn't been given long-term care, for example, the child has impact the long-term as well. And boys for all kinds of different reasons, but social reasons in particular, it's not given the tools to ask for help. So the outcomes tend to kind of become more extreme in boys. And for mothers, I'm assuming there's a lot of like a care available, help available. Is it well-noticed? I know when we were having a kid, the nurse used to come and visit us in the flat and check how she was. Yeah, in the UK we certainly do. I mean, the whole tradition of midwifery, the tradition of health visiting is geared towards looking after mom. If, I mean, you kind of hit the nail on the head, I mean, the health visitor will ask questions of your wife that probably wouldn't have asked questions of you. I don't even think I had to be there. Exactly. In terms of both practical policies, so for example, the NHS at the moment have a policy of routinely screening all new moms for mental illness. They don't have a similar policy for men. And when do they do that? So is that during? During the anti-natal period. So prenatally, they will have a routine, someone will ask them a question about their mental health, mental history. And if it's deemed to be at risk, they will get follow-up care. And men don't get the same routine questioning. The NHS is now moving to a system where men whose partners have post-natal depression will get routine care. But it still means that men who have a history of mental illness, for example, will not be asked about their mental illness. Crazy. It's crazy. How come there's not been more research done? I think there has been quite a bit in terms of understanding, certainly, the female perspective or the mom's perspective. I think historically, one of the problems was that no one really thought that men could get post-natal depression. It kind of reflects what we still think in terms of public awareness of post-natal depression. How come? So, what they're kind of like, just man up, crack on, you didn't have the baby. I think one of the kind of big myths of post-natal depression is that it's caused by neurochemical changes. So, this idea that women who are pregnant will experience neurochemical changes, things like changes in testosterone, prolactin, estrogen, and the common idea is that men don't experience that, so they can't get post-natally depressed. In fact, recent research has suggested that men experience changes not just after birth, but even during the wife's pregnancy in terms of changes in testosterone, prolactin. So, all these neurochemical changes are happening in men as well. I think the other big myth is that everything that happens during pregnancy are kind of risk factors for... What would you mean? So, for example, if the mum has a complication during birth, that might place her at increased risk for depression. And obviously, men don't get pregnant, so they can't get post-natal depression. I think the kind of problem with that argument again, though, is that it kind of essentially treats the dad as a bystander. You're kind of taking him out of the family unit and you're saying anything that happens to the family unit doesn't affect him as an individual. Obviously, it does. It's a kind of very simple example. If the mum is struggling to breastfeed, the dad might feel like that says responsibility to try and help, but you may end up feeling like he can't do anything. No, it's true. Also, if your wife is breastfeeding, you can't do anything. And if you're not using a bottle, it's just breastfeeding. I mean, you're just... You're doing nothing, right? I mean, maybe cleaning a few nappies. If anything, yeah. And that's it. And then, obviously, depending on how long your wife chooses to breastfeed for, because it's their decision, mostly, you might not do anything for a year or so. But the general point, though, is that anything that acts as a stressor can trigger post-natal depression, whether it's mums or dads. And in that sense, there really isn't anything different in terms of the kind of risk factors and causes of post-natal depression. Anything that acts as a stressor. And obviously, some things will affect mums disproportionately, the fact that they might be more tired because they look doing more aftercare during the post-natal period. But all of these things also affect dads. The general line from researchers now is that there isn't a single cause of post-natal depression. It's called essentially what we call a multi-factorial etiology. All that simply means is that there are lots of causes and there can be lots of different causes. And in men, another classic example, something we've already touched on, which is the kind of discrepancy between what men expect and what the reality of childbirth is. Not just childbirth, but also the post-natal period. So whether fathers are actually prepared for life after the child's born. Yeah. Before we had our son, I don't think I ever saw a newborn. I don't think I'd ever seen one in real life, I mean. Like just held it and yeah. But women often do and they often have more experiences like that. Not saying that necessarily changes how you experience your own child being born, but still it means that they are often, they might be having more conversations or different conversations about childbirth, about post-natal and the post-natal period and so on. The other thing is men generally don't talk to other dads about post-natal period. I mean you don't say don't talk to, I don't, maybe this is just me, but I don't remember having a conversation with my dad about what it's going to be like. I definitely didn't. I definitely didn't. It's interesting because you know, you go to the antenatal classes and the whole things get up for you supporting a wife, which is for sure like massively important. But also I think if they can pair dads for, because you know, at the moment, you know there's a big stigma attached to dads who want to stay at home and look after their kids. There's a big stigma attached to dads who want to take longer paternity leave. You know, a friend of mine was able to take six months and he went to his boss and he was like, hey, I'm going to take six months and the guy was like, really? You sure you want to take six months? You know, it was kind of, you know, guys, mostly I think you're expected to like crack on, get back to work and then suddenly you're like, I've got someone else to support so I need to make sure I'm making money and your relationship changes a lot because it's just you and your wife and suddenly there's like baby that your wife's spending all their time on and you're getting shouted at or whatever. And if at that particular moment in time you're struggling with your mental health, it's going to be difficult. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one of the things that people often, not often but sometimes say about dads who are struggling with their mental health is that they're jealous of their partners or they're jealous that they've lost their partners to their child. I often find those kind of comments kind of patronizing. For me, when I was struggling, I never felt jealous of my wife. I wanted what she had with my son. I wanted to feel what she was feeling. And for me, as it kind of almost as an outsider looking at their relationship, it looked like the relationship that I wanted. At that point, I didn't feel anything. I was struggling. So every day was a kind of a battle to do the kind of basic things like wake up and brush my teeth. And in my head, I'd be constantly fighting these battles against this, the kind of what I call the depressed voice was talking to me and saying, you're an unfit parent or you're not good enough, you can't do this. And when you're constantly fighting those thoughts in your head every single day, it takes away all your energy. And do you think this is a combination of the hormonal changes and also just the big life change of having a kid and a child? I mean, you'll notice that there's these sleepless nights and it happens suddenly. There's almost like a plateau where everything is fine and then suddenly you have the child at home again and suddenly you're not sleeping. And a lot of dads might even go back to work after a couple of weeks. Oh, most do? Yeah, definitely. So you're managing both this fact that you're just not sleeping, not getting enough sleep with the fact that you're back at work and you're having to do all the kind of normal things you do at work. Which all can be placed a huge strain on the dad. Some people say dads can't get postnatal depression. The kind of short answer is that all the risk factors are there. Everything that could trigger postnatal depression. Or if you want to put it differently, all the triggers that could trigger depression in the postnatal period are there for the dad. Yeah, a lot of people denying that it's the case. I think a lot of people still don't want to believe that it can affect men. I think, well, I think there are two reasons. I think one is that it feels quite transgressive in terms of what men are expected to be during the postnatal period. A lot of dads are told or sold this narrative that they have to toughen up, they have to be the rock of the family. This is the moment when they show that they can do everything, they can go to work and they can bring home an incoming, they can look after the child, they can do everything like this wonderful, superhuman individual. And I think any time a man then goes, I'm struggling here, I think a lot of people take it as an almost a kind of transgressive act in terms of his masculinity. It's almost like it's saying, you're not allowed to say you're struggling with your mental health. Yeah, no, it's 100%, 100%. It's interesting, when we had our first kids, a good friend of mine had theirs about two weeks before. The husband of my friend, obviously both really good friends, he was telling me about the story of the hallway dropped and the alarms went off and they got rushed into the emergency C section and stuff. And he was telling me a bit about how he was feeling and stuff. And then when we had, I had exactly the same experience, like the alarms went off and I'm like, ah, that's how my friend, what he experienced. And so because we'd spoken about it, I was like probably a lot calmer than I used to be. But that's kind of an outlier. Most of the time, if I'm speaking to my mates, guy mates, they're not really sharing stories about how difficult it was or the challenges. Women though, I mean, if I'm speaking to my girlfriends, they're much more, they share and they talk a lot more about it. I mean, this is a much more broader pattern of what's happening in this social life at the moment. Boys aren't taught how to, and boys and men aren't taught how to say, I'm struggling. Boys are essentially taught all the time that you have to strive for this version of masculinity where you're always tough, you're always robust. I think with parenthood that slightly changes a bit, I think there is a kind of version of positive masculinity where dads strive to be better human beings for their family. But I think overall masculinity and striving for the idealized version of masculinity where you're tough and robust and self-reliant, essentially means you're not given the space and the tools to be able to say, I'm struggling here. I think one of the big difficulties and I think this is certainly true of me is that when men start to struggle with their mental health, they normalize the behavior. They essentially say, I'm not dead. Therefore, everything must be okay. Essentially what that does is it says, all everything that's happening to me right now can be reframed as non-mental illness. I'm not depressed because I'm surviving. I'm doing everything I need to do, might be still going to work. For me, I would still be able to go to work and look like I was functioning. I might pop to the gym or do all the kind of things that you'd expect outwardly I would still be doing. And so that kind of validates this assumption that I can't be mentally ill because I'm still here. Yeah, I mean, it'd be interesting to know whether the study's been done is if it's changed over the years or it's always been here, it's just talked about more now and it's being more visible. I think there's much more openness now. There's certainly much more openness about men and you see this with celebrities about them talking about their mental illness and I think there's much more, there is much more, there are greater opportunities for men to talk about it. My worry is that a lot of the time this is happening with celebrities, the celebrities are given the space to talk about their mental illness, the common individual is very different. They might not have the resources, they might not have the skills, they might not have the support network to be able to do that. That's true. So until I think it filters down to be able to say I'm struggling but then the other big question is if you're a celebrity and you say, look I'm struggling with mental health, there'll be lots of people around to help you through that. I think one of the difficulties with a lot of men is I don't know where to get help. Once you say I'm struggling, what do you do next? Like where'd you get help from? And if you don't know, you're not going to get help. And this is kind of part of the problem as well that a lot of health professionals if they kind of believe and they buy into these myths that men can't get post-natal depression, they might miss the fact that a man is asking for help or doesn't know what he's doing or struggling with his mental illness. What I always find amazing is that health professionals, they should just be a focus on wanting to make people feel better. They're not a kind of dogma around what men can't get depressed or this doesn't really exist and there should just be the focus on making people feel better. So my ethos is the whole thing about post-natal depression should be about helping the family unit irrespective of which member of the family unit is struggling. If the dad's struggling, he needs care. If the mom's struggling, she needs care. If the child's struggling, she needs care. So I think part of the issue for me is that when you remove the dad and you essentially isolate him as a special case to make him immune from post-natal depression or not worthy of care, essentially what you're saying is the whole family unit doesn't require care. Somehow the family unit just needs to plod along until something changes. Presumably, if the dad's depressed, it's going to affect mom and babe. Yeah, well, I mean, one of the biggest things we know is that if the dad's depressed, knock-on effect on mom is huge. Moms are about two and a half times more likely to get post-natal depression if the dad's depressed. Wow. Does it work the other way too? Yeah. So it's the same experience. So if a mom's post-natal depressed, the man's more likely to get depressed as well. One of the other things we know is that if the dad is struggling, there is a huge knock-on impact on the child as well. So in the kind of very basic stuff, like if you're post-natally depressed, you haven't got the energy to do basic things, like wanting to play with your child or read to your child or sing to your child. You may not just have the headspace to do that. You may also respond to your child much more critically. So rather than focusing on the kind of loving and being there for your child, caring for your child, you might respond by being much more critical, self-critical. I remember there was a two-week period after my son was born, and every time I kind of held him, it felt like he was, he just started crying. And a lot of dads talk about the same thing where they kind of feel like their son or children are rejecting them at that early age. I mean, obviously they haven't got that kind of decision-making ability. So obviously it's a psychological thing. But I remember experiencing that and going, my son doesn't want me. And just kind of blaming myself the whole time. That's also somebody talked about before, like the preparation. If you've never held a newborn, I mean, babies cry. That's what they do. You know, they're quite hungry, they're quite friendly, they're nappy-changed, whatever. But if you're not experienced it, again, it's just a whole new thing to deal with. How come men are so bad at asking for help? It's about masculinity. I think we're just not socialized to have these kinds of conversations. And this is an anomaly, I think. What we're doing now? Yeah, what we're doing now is a complete anomaly. I don't think we have often the space to have these kinds of conversations to say I'm struggling. I think a lot of the time when men ask for help, or even if they come close to asking for help, these kind of conversations are shut down, particularly by other men. Other men don't want to hear about your troubles. At least that was my experience. Especially with the other people who I might have asked for help. I don't think I ever felt comfortable asked. And with these, like, immediate family members or close friends? Family members and close friends. I don't think I would have ever said to them, I think part of that was I didn't know at that time that post-natal repression in men was a thing, so I kind of bought into the myth myself. But also having a conversation where you kind of go, I'm struggling and I don't know what to do is a really difficult conversation. It's almost, well, to use an old-fashioned term, it's emasculating. It feels like you're losing all sense of who you should be as an individual. And my response was to essentially become hyper-masculine in other forms. I'd spent a lot of time in the gym. I kind of overworked the point where I was kind of doing, I would sleep for a couple of hours a day and kind of go straight back to work. Well, yeah. And which was not sustainable and even more, even worse, contributed to what came later, which is a severe breakdown in my mental state. Do you feel like it's difficult to speak to your wife about it? Because she's obviously going through her own stuff, licking off the kids. I never talked to her properly. And I think part of that was that I wanted to be the one who looked after the family, because I wasn't doing very much by this point. I'd kind of almost withdrawn from her so much and actually not just her, but my son as well, that I'd struggled to say I did anything at all as part of that family. And so to ask her for help felt completely shameful, admitting to myself that something was wrong in the first place, which I was hesitant to do, then also then saying to her that I need help was really difficult. At what point do you, obviously, because given the job you do and all the research, you're probably more tuned to it than others, at what point does someone realize actually I need help? Does it come from the individual or is it actually the people around them that'll be like, hold on a second, you know, you should. I don't think there is a perfect answer to that question, because I think every individual experience will be specific to how, for example, if you haven't got people who support you, you might not depend on other people. For example, there's lots of research to suggest that men don't necessarily want to talk to their close relatives, including their partners, about their mental illnesses, they're much more likely to talk, for example, to their barbers, someone who's a relative stranger. So there's a lot of effort at the moment to train barbers to be able to ask the right questions of men and then get them the help they need if it's necessary. Interesting. Yeah, because I guess it's kind of, it's perceived as a less threatening space almost, to be able to talk to someone who knows you well enough but not that well. But if you're a barber and you're trained to ask the right questions, you can pick up on it and you can get the men the help they need. For me, I think it took a very long time for me to even acknowledge that something was wrong. I think I'd kind of gone through, even at points where I was suicidal, I think I'd kind of still thought to myself, there's nothing wrong here. This is what all men go through when they just had a baby, which is ridiculous now to look back and think, to even think I thought that at the time. My wife essentially saved me, I think. Yeah. Well, I think for a start she didn't abandon me. Yeah. But then she, and this is, I mean this quite literally, she dragged me to the GP and said have a conversation with the GP please. Wow. And did you accept it at that moment? I think even then I thought I was fighting it. I didn't want to see the GP. I don't think I necessarily had the tools at that point to have a conversation about my mental health. So even then it was still a struggle but I think looking back, I'm really glad I did. And this was the first point at which a health professional had a conversation with me when we need to get you some serious help. Right. And how did she identify? Are there things to look out for if someone's in a similar position? So if you're a health professional, there are diagnostic tools you can use. Essentially they're kind of questionnaires that men are asked to fill in and they score a certain number of points they referred for care. Often GPs in particular who've maybe had a history of or had experience dealing with men who have had depression may just have a conversation with them and say you can get routine after care through in this borough, for example, through CAMHS and the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. So different routes into care but essentially having a conversation with a health professional is the starting point. You've got to do that. And how does, how can someone, I mean if they're in the same position as your wife, you know who they've obviously, there are things to look out for to identify if your husband or partner is going through the same thing. So I think the kind of common symptoms would be things like a loss of energy. So is your partner still experiencing and having fun doing the kind of things that they used to? That may even be just things like cooking or cleaning or maybe not cleaning, but cooking certainly or going out with their friends. Have they withdrawn socially? Are they still seeing their old friends? Are they still seeing people regularly? And are they having essentially what we would call social withdrawal which is essentially removing themselves from the family unit? Are they spending a lot of time on their own? Are they struggling to have conversations? Are they spending time with the child? Those kind of things. I think it can often be difficult because men aren't very, not all men, but most men don't have the right tools to be able to have these kinds of conversations. And it takes time to develop. And I think a lot of the time men react with psychological reactants. For example, if I said to you, let's have a conversation about your mental health right now, what you might do is shut down the conversation because you don't want to have that conversation. So I think placing or giving, developing skills and developing tools for men to be able to have those conversations when they require it is really important. I often worry that by the time they're postnatally oppressed or by the time they're depressed in general, it might already be too late. Right. And then the journey to recovery. So you went to the GP and I mean, obviously they asked the right questions and was that the thing that sent you on the path? Yeah, I often think that there's an expectation that once you're in care that there is a linear path to recovery. And often it isn't like that. So in my particular case, my GP referred me for psychological help which I received for I think six or seven months and I shifted from that to a parenting class. And is that immediate? So the GP says? In my case, it was serious enough. I think that they thought emergency care was necessary. It doesn't always happen. And obviously this also means that if we want men, I think asking for help is a very important thing. But then if you want to help men long-term, you also need to have a funded public health service which is able to help men long-term get them the care they need, whether it's short-term or long-term whether it's medication or psychological treatments, whatever it is, all that needs to be funded somehow. So is there a barrier of funding then? Or once you're in the process, in the system, let's say? It may be a very long time. So there's a shortage of mental health care practitioners in the first place. And there's a severe shortage of funding for mental health care in this country. All of which means that there might often be long, long waiting lists to get seen, particularly if you haven't got severe clinical depression. Right. Particularly if you're not suicidal, for example, you may not get immediate care. Interesting. Presumably, though, as we've discussed, by the time a man actually gets into it, I mean, the case is probably quite severe. Yeah, crazy. And so once you say it, so you go to the GP, the GP refers you? Yeah. So he referred me to psychological treatment, which is essentially therapy for a period of six months. And I went from there to a parents-in-class run by the local council, which was, I think, for me that- Was that a mix of mothers and- I was the only dad. Really? Yeah. Wow. It was a class of, I think, 12 or 13, when I was the only dad, which is strange. It was nice in the sense that, obviously, I was quite fun for me to be the only dad there. How did it make you feel? It made me quite sad, because I think a lot of dads would benefit from just doing some basic parenting classes. And for me, this was life-changing. It gave me the tools to interact with my son. For the first time, I wasn't reacting by going, I hate myself, I hate life, I don't want to spend time with my child. I got to the point, this was much later, but I got to the point where I was, he could spend time with him. It kind of changed my whole outlook about how I related to him. So I'm a big advocate for parenting classes. And I think a lot of people have this conception that parenting comes later in life, that parenting is parenting at a five-year-old or a 10-year-old. It's not a two-year-old, a one-year-old needs parenting. Definitely. And just being able to interact with your two-year-old or a one-year-old is life-changing. But you need to be taught that, especially if you haven't got the skills to do it. Definitely. So there is help available, but I think what we're discussing is the key barrier is actually for men to seek or identifying they need help and then asking for help. And then once you're in the process of funding a site, but there's stuff around that you can do. Is there anything else that you changed in your life? I mean, it'd be great to talk about exercise and CrossFit, which is where we met, because I saw a talk from Frank Brunei and Tyson Fury, both overweight boxers, but they both suffered, or still suffer from mental health problems and both said the big thing for them was seven days a week at the gym. Have you found the same thing has helped you? I am slightly ambivalent about, at least my relationship with exercise. I think in the long term it certainly helped me. When I was post-natally depressed, I think I used it as a crutch, almost to kind of, because I would feel like I wasn't good enough going to the box and going to the gym and being good enough in the gym felt like almost like a replacement for everything else that was shit in my life. So I don't know if I developed necessarily a healthy relationship with the gym, certainly when I was struggling with my mental health. Now that I'm in a much better position in terms of my health, I find it very helpful. Going in, I go regularly in the morning, but I just find it gives me the kind of boost to be able to have a good day. And there's, I mean, there's tons of research showing that exercises are related with more positive mental health, but also more positive body image, all kinds of wonderful things. I think when you get down to it, I think the issue for me is that a lot of men's relationship with the gym is complex. It isn't as simple as saying that it's always going to be positively associated with mental health. There might be an aspect to it which is positive. There can also be a lot of aspects which of the gym can be negative, particularly if it gets addictive. I'm interested in what you mean, you don't feel good enough, not strong enough, and you start thinking about all of these types of things. Interesting, so if you do it in the right way, because it produces serotonin and all of these cool things that makes you more positive and... I suppose the trick is not to use the gym as a replacement for anything else that you feel is deficient in your life. Right, okay. Like you might be going, at least I would feel like I'll go to the gym and hit certain targets about how much I was lifting or how much I was. Like I could do or whatever. And suddenly feel amazing about myself. And meanwhile, my relationship with my son was deteriorating to the point where we had very little going on. So I don't think it's necessarily always a healthy thing. I think it has to be managed and I think there is a way of managing exercise that for the individual that can make it a positive thing. And then so with treatment, so it's a mixture of talking to people, drugs and stuff as well. There are lots of different options available. Drugs is one of them, it's a medication. It's often prescribed, sertraline is the common antidepressant. What you call it? Sertraline, it's the common antidepressant that's prescribed for depression. I am much more favorable, I think it just maybe to my personality to having a conversation with someone and working through what the issues are for me. The version of therapy that I went through was called family systemic or family centered therapy. Essentially it puts the family unit in view. So there would be sessions when I'd take my son into therapy with me and we'd play together and my therapist would watch me playing with him and kind of pick up on things that I might be kind of hiding or not wanting to talk about. And it's also about talking about my own relationships with my own parents and how that might influence what's happening to me now. So I think that kind of holistic perspective for me was very useful. Some people might find the combination of both medication and therapy really helpful. There are all kinds of other interventions that have been shown to be helpful with depression. And then the practitioners suggest and whatever treatment they feel is best and you go through that. I often feel it should be a two-way discussion and a decision-making process that's shared either with the GP or the health professional. And I think men respond better particularly when they're given some semblance of power in that relationship. When they're kind of not told this is what you should be doing but this is how we might get you help. Perhaps this is how I might get you better. And so if someone's feeling depressed now and wants to get some help what are the best avenues? Is it the GP? Are there anyone else they can talk to maybe anonymously or? So there are lots of places you can ask for help for. If you're really struggling and you need emergency care go to A&E and that's your starting point. If you're struggling with your health right now if you're suicidal go to A&E call for an ambulance go to A&E. If you feel like you are struggling but you're not sure whether you're struggling have a conversation with your GP if that's possible. GPs may not always be receptive. I think I was very lucky to have a GP who instantly went this is depression and we need to get you some help but GPs may not always react in that way. So if it's not the GP maybe have a conversation. If you're a dad have a conversation with a midwife or a health visitor. I think the tradition is now changing and health visitors are a much better place to have these kind of conversations with men. If you want to talk to someone anonymously try a barber. Yeah. Is there any like child-line type? So I use the Samaritans quite a lot. Okay, right. They're very helpful for me. They're all kinds of, the calm is another good example of a charity working with men. My end again is another good example. They're all kinds of charities that will be helpful. One thing that I will say is that a lot of men tend to think that depression will just go away. It'll just disappear on its own. And I don't think I've ever come across a case where that's been, that's what's happened. It just doesn't go away on its own. It will kill you before it goes away on its own. So get help and don't feel that you have to do it on your own. There will lots of, there will be hundreds of thousands of men who are in the same position as you or wondering what do I do with this? I think the starting point is to acknowledge that something is wrong but then also then seeking help. And there's a lot more men going through this than you think, right? How many, what percentage is roughly? So in the UK we think that between about eight and 11% of new dads will suffer from postnatal depression. I don't know what that translates to in terms of the actual number but that's a huge percentage of dads. Is that similar? Roughly similar. So with mums it's about 60 to 13% will suffer from postnatal depression in the UK. So about one in 10 roughly will suffer from postnatal depression. So a lot of people are going for the same thing. Awesome, thank you so much for coming in. Thanks for sharing your story and all the advice and everything and see you at the gym. Yes, see you at the gym. Thank you. Hey, folks, thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places.