Perinatal Depressive and Affective Disorders: Assessment, Screening and Treatment

Dear Colleagues,

The birth of a child is an event that triggers significant changes on an emotional, relational, and existential level, which can expose both parents to adaptation problems and psychological difficulties. Although the scientific literature on post-partum maternal depression has been extensive for decades, only recently has research been dedicated to paternal perinatal depression with the aim of evaluating its clinical manifestations, epidemiology, relationship with maternal depression and its influence on the psychophysical development of the child.

Despite the methodological difficulties encountered in research on men, meta-analyses in this area have shown that fathers suffer from perinatal depression almost as much as mothers but tend to express their difficulties differently. Contemporary research, in fact, has highlighted the need to assess perinatal distress using gender-specific tools for mothers and fathers ^[1,2]. It is essential to develop new instruments to evaluate a broad range of depressive equivalents in order to increase the sensitivity and specificity of the screening.

Furthermore, given the frequent comorbidity of anxiety disorders with depressive disorders in both parents and the frequent onset of symptoms in the prenatal period, the correct diagnostic definitions should be Paternal Perinatal Affective Disorder (PPAD) in the father and Maternal Perinatal Affective Disorder (MPAD) in the mother.

Prevention and treatment protocols for these disorders are still poorly explored within the field, especially in fathers. In these cases, it is necessary to consider not only the individual difficulties, but also the couple dynamics and the attachment relationship between the partners.

This Special Issue of Behavioral Sciences, entitled “Perinatal Depressive and Affective Disorders: Assessment, Screening and Treatment”, aims to present the latest research in this area.

[1] Walsh, T.B.; Davis, R.N.; Garfield, C. A Call to Action: Screening Fathers for Perinatal Depression. Pediatrics 2020, 145, https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2019-1193.

[2] Baldoni, F.; Giannotti, M. Perinatal Distress in Fathers: Toward a Gender-Based Screening of Paternal Perinatal Depressive and Affective Disorders. Front. Psychol. 2020, 11, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01892.

Prof. Dr. Franco Baldoni
Guest Editor

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