Episode 23
I Felt Like A Bystander: PROFESSOR VIREN SWAMI
In a Movember male-mental-health special, this week I chat to Professor Viren Swami. Viren is Professor of Social Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University and is ranked in the top 2% of 'most-cited scientists' in the world. Viren's research is focused on the promotion of positive body image in diverse cultural groups, as well as mental health literacy and understandings of mental ill-health.
His work has moved on to include paternal postnatal depression following Viren's own struggles with fatherhood. He talks to me very candidly and movingly about the effects of suffering from PND after the birth of his son. Not to be missed.
*TRIGGER WARNING: Postnatal Depression, Birth Trauma and feelings of Suicide*
IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
[00:00] Teaser quote.
[01:59] Introducing Viren.
[02:54] Viren before his son came along.
[03:27] The abstract concept of 'having a baby'.
[04:44] Viren's work in mental health literacy.
[06:02] How men often put off seeking help.
[07:04] Highlight to other relevant episodes from S1 - Mark Williams, Elliott Rae and Dr Andy Mayers.
[07:27] It's a myth that men don't suffer from postnatal depression - 8-12% of first-time fathers do.
[08:13] Applying the term 'postnatal depression' to men can often make people less understanding, due to the misconception they are taking emphasis away from women.
[09:42] During the pregnancy, Viren felt estranged and 'not part of the process'.
[10:26] The birth itself - an unexpected and traumatic birth at home.
[12:20] Holding his son for the first time - feelings of numbness and not wanting to be there.
[15:09] The overwhelming responsibility of having a tiny human being and not knowing what to do.
[15:50] Problems with sleep.
[19:30] Viren's wife's experience - worrying about Viren on top of being a new mum.
[20:48] Issues with Jesse not feeding. Feelings of helplessness and not being able to 'fix' things.
[23:16] Struggling to function normally. Feelings of shame.
[24:21] Research study demonstrated the difference in how people perceived PND in mums and fathers.
[25:23] Keeping his feelings hidden.
[27:44] The devastating consequences of men suffering from postnatal depression.
[29:18] Depression doesn't get better on its own - the importance of talking.
[30:15] Internalising the depression, "there's nothing wrong with me!"
[31:04] Once opening up to a health visitor and being shut down.
[33:42] Plans for screening fathers - the need for everyone to be screened.
[35:33] Fears around being 'mentally ill' or having his son taken away.
[36:34] Feelings of anger at everything.
[37:08] "Why'd you hate me?" Irrational thoughts that Viren wasn't needed by his family. Feelings of suicide and battling himself.
[39:22] Feelings of love for Jesse didn't come till much later.
[41:17] The turning point - a letter from his wife and a visit to his GP.
[43:55] Advice for dads going through it right now. The affect of non-help-seeking on your family.
[46:33] Getting better isn't a linear process - there will be many ups and downs along the way.
[48:39] Realising that 'it's not your fault'.
[50:10] Playing with Jesse in front of his psychotherapist and being told that he was a good parent.
[52:00] Falling in love with his son and learning how to 'parent'.
[53:14] Breaking the fear of taking his son out on his own.
[55:06] The brilliance of baby cinema, like the Picturehouse's 'Big Scream'.
[56:03] The difficulty 'rationalising' those intrusive thoughts.
[56:28] The potential to be depressed after the birth of a child exists in everyone.
[57:29] So many people go through this experience - it is not shameful.
[58:18] We need to look at helping the family unit as a whole, whatever your family looks like.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- For many dads, the idea of 'having a baby' is an abstract concept.
- Mental health literacy is the idea of how non-scientists understand what mental health is, how they think illnesses like depression happen.
- Men often put off seeking help as it doesn't fit their conception of what 'being masculine' means. They can also lack the vocabulary to explain how they are feeling.
- 8-12% of first time fathers will experience debilitating depression, anxiety or extreme stress.
- Difficulty with feeding can be one of the biggest contributors to psychological distress in new mums.
- A research study proved that people use the term 'postnatal depression' for symptoms in mums but 'exhaustion' or 'tiredness' for the same symptoms in dads.
- Tragically 1 in 10 men who experience depression will take their own lives.
- PND in men can have a devastating affect on the whole family - it can create feelings of rage and anger, can trigger PND in the mum and can affect the cognitive and linguistic development of the baby.
- Depression doesn't get better on its own - seeking support is crucial. There are loads of links in the show notes but your GP should always be your first port of call. Please talk.
- Health visitors need better training to understand cues for depression in dads.
- For many dads, they don't truly begin to bond with their child until they are older and interacting more.
- There are many pathways into care - from simply opening up to a friend or your family, to speaking to your GP or a psychotherapist.
- Non-help-seeking behaviour impacts on the whole family - the sooner you seek help, the better it is for them.
- Recovery isn't linear. There will be lots of ups and downs along the way and that is normal. But the good days will outweigh the bad with time.
- It is important to remember that depression is not your fault, it is a mental illness.
- Viren's research has proven that the potential to be depressed after the birth of your baby exists in everyone - no-one is immune.
- Asking for help is not shameful - it's the most powerful thing you want to do.
- Often men find once they are given a safe space to talk, they want to keep talking, they want to open up.
- Routine screening for all parents-to-be and parenting classes could make such a difference to the mental health of families.
- Picturehouse 'Big Scream' baby cinema.
- Movember is the leading charity changing the face of men's health. You can Donate to Movember here.
- Support for fathers can be found here: Fathers Reaching Out, Music Football Fatherhood, PMH Support, Dope Black Dads and Dad Matters.
- LISTEN: Blue MumDays S1 Ep 3 Elliott Rae on PTSD in Fathers.
- LISTEN: Blue MumDays S1 Ep 8 The Daddy Blues with Mark Williams and S1 Ep 9 Mark Williams part 2 on PND in Fathers.
- LISTEN: Blue MumDays S1 Ep 18 Dr Andrew Mayers which discusses PND in dads.
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NEXT EPISODE:
Next time I chat to Dr Orinayo Onabanjo, a chartered counselling psychologist with a passion for perinatal mental health. Orin's skills include helping mums cultivate stronger attachments with their babies and addressing the impact unresolved childhood trauma can have on the journey of motherhood. We chat everything from mum guilt to the racist inequalities faced by black and brown parents in the UK maternity system.
SUPPORT:
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Action on Postpartum Psychosis (APP)
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ADDA - the Attention Deficit Disorder Association
National Resource Center (NRC)/ADHD Helpline Health Information Specialists
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ADHD UK - peer support, created by people with ADHD for those with ADHD
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Andy's Man Club
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Association of Postnatal Illness
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Make Birth Better (Birth Trauma Support)
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We ultimately ended up having my son at home, which was incredibly stressful because ambulance services do not send out an ambulance until the baby is actually crowning. I overheard the operator on the phone while I was on the phone telling a colleague of his, "We're not gonna send out the ambulance, the baby's not here yet!" And so I was at home having to deal with my partner and had no understanding of what was happening. Absolutely nothing made sense at that point. After my son was born, they wrapped him up and the paramedics gave them to me and they were like, "Well done. Congratulations!" And I was just thinking "Why? What am I being congratulated for? And I remember my mum was there. She wanted to take a photo of me, the first photo of me and my son. I was like, I don't want to take this photo. I'm not happy at this point. It's such a strange photo to look at because I know what I'm feeling inside, which is I don't want to be here right now. I, I don't want to experience this. I don't want to feel this. And I'm almost kind of in my head going, "Why am I not feeling something else? Where is the love, where is the joy that I'm meant to be feeling, everyone's told me I'm going to experience at this point?" And outwardly I'm doing all the things you'd expect me to do. I'm, I'm pretending I'm, I'm happy. "Yes, I'm feeling really joyful and thank you for congratulating me." Inside I'm like a shell, almost like there's nothing there. Having a baby is meant to be the most joyful time of your life. But for many mums and dads, it can be the hardest and at times the darkest of places. Welcome to Season 2 of Blue MumDays, the podcast for anyone struggling with parenting. All the stories shared here are from the heart. These are real conversations and may be triggering, so please listen with discretion. Today's episode covers feelings of suicide. We will also signpost you to help in the show notes. Thank you. This episode was recorded during the spring of 2022. Today's guest is Professor Viren Swami, ranked in the top 2% of the most cited scientists in the world. Viren is the author of over 300 academic papers and three books, including Attraction Explained. Viren is Professor of Social Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University, where he is co-director of the Center for Groups and Societies. He is also a adjunct professor at Perdani University, where he is Director of the Center for Psychological Medicine. Viren's research is focused on the promotion of positive body image in diverse cultural groups, as well as mental health literacy or understandings of mental ill health, including paternal postnatal depression. The latter is informed by his own experience of postnatal depression, which he's also written about. Thank you so much for joining us today, Viren - really pleased to have you with us. PROFESSOR VIREN SWAMI: Thank you for having me. First of all, if we could start out and get a sense of you before you had your son, you know, what you were like as a person and what you were doing in terms of your work? Wow, that is a huge question. What was I like? I don't know. I, I, I was generally happy. My partner and I had got married, I think a year before our son was born, maybe a year and a half before our son was born. Um, I just got my, my professorship at, at Anglo Ruskin University. So life was generally quite good. And how did you view sort of becoming a parent? Were you excited? I don't know. I, I think looking back, I think it's easy to go, you know, I was fully into the, into the decision to get, to get, to have a child. It was really abstract. It wasn't something concrete. To me, it was like this notion that you can have a child and yeah, that's what families do. They have children. It wasn't ever really a. Decision to me, even after my partner was, was pregnant. I don't think I really ever felt like this is real. This is something that's going to happen. You're going to have to care for a human being. I don't think I understood that. The kind of realities of that. It's amazing, isn't it? even when you are carrying the child within yourself and you know, this is the experience that I certainly felt and so many people I've spoken to, that it does feel a really nebulous until you actually have your baby. You know, you know in your head what it's like. And I think for parents, especially during the pandemic where the fathers or birthing partners or co-partners couldn't actually go into see scans or be part of that process, it makes it even less of a reality if you, you get me? And were you doing your work within the field of mental health before you had your son? Yeah, so I, I'd done quite a bit of work on mental health literacy. So mental health literacy is basically the idea of how, how non-scientists understand something like mental health. What do they think it is, how does it happen? Something like how does depression happen and what are their explanations for it? So I've done quite a bit of work on mental health literacy focused, um, a lot on men's understandings of depression, for example. Not my main area of research, but I'd done enough work. I'd never done work on postnatal depression before my son was born. And in fact, if, I mean, honestly, I don't think it even, it wasn't my radar, I don't think I'd any conception of it existing in men, um, prior to my son being born. What, what sort of instilled this interest in that area for you? Was it lived experience or was it the brain that fascinated you? I I, so a lot of my research is focused on mental health in general, but a lot of the kind of work that scientists do is often focused on understanding the scientific causes of mental illness. And we often don't think about how non-scientists understand something like depression, because if you're understanding of, of mental ill health is completely different to a scientist and it will also affect your help seeking behaviors, for example. And one of the things we know, for example, in my own research, the kind of early work that I did was focus on gendered behaviors and masculinities and how masculinities might impact something like help seeking behavior. And what we know is that men often put off seeking help because of constructions of, of what it means to be a masculine individual. Um, asking for help doesn't fit with our conceptions of what it is, what it means to be masculine. Um, so my, my kind of interest in, in mental health literacy derived from this kind of gender binary of, of help seeking basically that men. Often put off help seeking. They often have difficulty articulating mental illness and mental ill health because they don't have the tools to communicate. Something as simple as saying, I'm struggling. It's funny because a lot of men find it difficult speaking, you know, going forward to their GP about physical health, and so yeah, I can totally understand why talking to somebody about. Mental health is even tougher. And I was gonna say, if there are any fathers listening to this podcast right now please keep listening because obviously, speaking to Viren and his own experiences, incredibly relevant. But I would also highlight the episodes with Mark Williams and Elliot Ray and also my interview with Dr. Andrew Mayers because all of those episodes deal with the experience that, that men have with postnatal depression. And it's a complete myth that men don't or are, aren't affected by postnatal depression or the perinatal period. Because actually, uh, I think the, the latest statistic is one in 10... it varies a lot depending on, on how you, you measure something like postnatal depression, depends on the timeframe that you're talking about. But yeah, generally between eight and 12% of first time fathers will experience. Debilitating, um, depression, anxiety, um, often extreme stress as well. Um, and often they're not singular experiences. We often talk about postnatal depression, but postnatal depression as well from co-morbid with anxiety and high levels of stress. Um, so there's, I suppose they're kind, kind of broader idea is that we don't think about postnatal depression as affecting men because it's often a term that we use almost exclusively for Mums. And I often think, you know, if we just said a dad was depressed and we don't use the term postnatal depression, we would almost instinctively say that Dad should get some help. They should seek professional help. But as soon as you apply the term postnatal depression, people get upset about this. They think we are trying to steal. Kinda limited funding that's available for, for Mums postnatal care, which we're not. Or they think it's something where men have already had privilege historically and they want even more privilege now. And it's not the case. I think always simply saying that these, if these issues affect men, and if to the extent they do affect men, we should be seeking help for men. We should be offering, offering them the care that they need to ensure the best possible chance for the entire family, family unit to flourish. And it's like saying if someone's in your family is struggling, you don't want to help them because of a term, cause of, of a semantic use of a, of language is, is to me, seems really not just offensive but also quite ridiculous. Um, if you flip from that to saying a person was depressed following the birth of a child, the instinct would be we should get that person some help. Yeah. Yeah. And the hard reality is that there should be greater funding for everybody, and early intervention is so important, not just for the parents' wellbeing, but the wellbeing of the entire family. And that includes the child. So are you happy to talk about the circumstances leading up to the birth and, and the birth? Was it an easy pregnancy? Did everything go to plan? It was easy-ish. I think I'd become quite estranged for my partner quite early on in the pregnancy. I think partly it was, didn't seem real to me. It didn't seem like I was, it wasn't affecting me. It was, I was excluded from the experience and that was quite difficult. And I didn't really understand it at the time. I don't think I had a conscious awareness of me thinking, Oh, I'm not part of this process, therefore I'm going to exclude myself here, or kind of strange myself for my partner. But I think over time what did happen was that I felt increasingly, like I was not part of the process. Um, but her pregnancy itself, Was relatively straightforward. Um, the, the one complication is the right word, the one spanner in the works. We planned to go to hospital. Um, but um, we ultimately ended up having my son at home, um, which was incredibly stressful because for the, i, I dunno if you know this, but ambulance services do not send out an ambulance until the baby is actually crowning. Oh my gosh. Really? I overheard the, the operator on the phone while I was on the phone telling some, a colleague of his, We're not gonna send out the ambulance, the baby's not here yet. And so I was at home having to deal with my partner and had no understanding of what was happening. Absolutely nothing made sense at that point. Um, but yeah. Anyway, obviously eventually the ambulance services did arrive. There were three, three ambulances parked outside our house, but. Wow. It's like buses! Yeah, But they were brilliant. They were loved it, and they, they dealt with everything. I remember they, they just came in and they said, Why don't you put the, put the kettle on? And I thought, You're not taking this seriously enough. My baby's almost here. Um, yeah, they were brilliant. I, I have been quite frightening. I, I don't think I had a concept of it, of it, of kind of understanding my, how, how much fear I was in at the time. My, my, my wife did later say, you know, you were shouting at the operator down the phone. And I was so apologetic. I was telling the, the ambulance screwed. Like, I wanna call up the operator just to apologize. I didn't mean to shout. And, um, but I, it was stressful. But I, I think that the thing for me was, once everything had settled down, I, it was relief rather than anything else. I felt just like that's over with. And obviously they can't, because it was meant to be a hospital birth. They take you to hospital. right. Obviously we went to hospital eventually and there were complications with my wife at that point. Um, and so kind of initially at least a lot of the kind of skin to skin contact was with me, um, which was strange cuz I don't think I actually felt at the time like, like this, you know, everyone kind of says to you when you, when you hold your child for the first time, you're gonna feel this wonderful moment of relation. And I never felt that, I never had that. It was always kind of, if anything, numbness, it just kind of, Mm. PROFESSOR VIREN SWAMI: I dunno what to do now. So many people I've spoken to for this podcast have said exactly the same to me, and I, I didn't feel, you know, that wonderful endorphin rush that you're promised to get. And I wonder how. frequent that actually is, and, and whether the norm is that you do get that. And it's, you know, gosh, it must be the most wonderful thing in the world for those that are lucky enough to get that. But for those of us, it's, it, you wonder if there were more realistic expectations and, and the narrative was slightly different and more realistic, whether, as many of us would struggle with, becoming a parent because I, I know I felt guilt when I didn't get that 'ah', moment. Yeah, I, I just felt numb. I, I felt guilt a lot later on. It was, why am I not feeling that? It's that question that always bugged me. I remember as soon after my son was born, they wrapped him up and the paramedics gave them to me and they were like, Well done. Congratulations. And I was just thinking, I, I, Why? What am I being congratulated for? And I remember my, my mum was there. She wanted to take a photo of me, the first photo of me and my son. I was like, I don't want to take this photo. I'm not happy at this point. I don't know what you want to take a photo of. And I have the photo, I've looked at it since, and I'm smiling and you'd think this is parents really happy at this point. It's such a strange photo to look at because I know what I'm feeling inside, which is I don't, I don't want to be here right now. I, I don't want to experience this. I don't want to feel this. Um, and I'm almost kind of in my head going, Why am I not feeling something else? Where is the love, where is the joy that I'm meant to be feeling, everyone's told me I'm going to experience at this point. And outwardly I'm doing all the things you'd expect me to do. I'm, I'm pretending I'm, I'm happy. Yes, I'm, I'm feeling really joyful and thank you for congratulating me inside. I'm like a shell almost like there's nothing there. Um, like I said, I felt relief because obviously my son was, um, the cord was wrapped around his neck when he came out and everything. And I felt relief obviously, that he was safe and he was, um, He was healthy, I don't think I felt anything else. I mean, obviously then we got taken to hospital and we, we stayed there overnight and it was fine. But no one tells you this is a human child. This is a human being. Obviously you are meant to know this. You're meant to know your partner and you've given birth to a child. There is a human being involved here. But then you get packed off and you get sent home and no one comes with you. No one comes to help. No one tells you what to do. And everything you've been told about what it's going to be like is completely abstract. Oh, you change the diaper in this way, or they might not sleep at night and you feed them. Yes. But once you have the baby, it's an actual, real experience and suddenly it's not, It's not funny anymore. Suddenly it's not abstract anymore. And I remember coming home with our son and going, I, what do I do? What do we, I meant the, those first few nights, and he was a horrible sleeper. He'll probably watch this one day and think, Oh God, he's, he'll, he'll know this. Even now, he's a horrible sleeper. He still doesn't sleep through the night. Um, How old is he now? he's four Oh god. That's tough. That is so tough for you guys. That's torture. yeah, I, I quite, we've got a routine with him now, but yeah, he, he's not a great sleeper. Um, but those first few nights he just wouldn't sleep. And the combination of everything, him not sleeping, not knowing what to do, learning how to make a bottle for the first time, making sure it's warm at two o'clock in the morning, all of that suddenly becomes really different to what you thought it would be like. It wasn't a joyful, wonderful, lovely experience. It was a horrendous, horrible experience. And it's awful to say that, but that's the reality of it. What, what it was like for me. I remember sitting up at two o'clock in the morning just thinking, Why is he not sleeping? What do I have to do to get him to sleep? And he's refusing to sleep at two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock, and often there would be nights I'd just stay up with him holding him, not doing anything, just sitting on the couch with him hoping he falls asleep, uh, walking around the bedrooms, hoping he'll fall asleep continuously. No one tells you that's going to happen. No one tells you it's going to be that tough. No one talks about that kind of stuff. And if someone had said to me like before he was born, it might be really, really difficult, you should prepare for that. I might have done things different. I don't know. I think that lack of sleep, I mean it is absolute mental torture. My background is working at the BBC I was used to directing shoots and getting up early or working late into the night or pulling an all nighter. So I was thinking, " I've got up at three o'clock in the morning to go to a set, I can handle this!" No, nothing prepares you for that. It is absolute torture. And as well the crushing responsibility as you say, that suddenly you are responsible for a human life and you don't get anything as responsible as that. And that's what I really struggled with, especially in the early days I don't know if, if you and your wife had this, but I had that sense that he was gonna immediately stop breathing. So I was constantly checking on him to make sure he was still alive. And one, one thing that they don't tell you about, and I don't know if you had this with your son, the first couple of nights we had him, he would do these crazy jumps where he would sort of put all his limbs out and he'd be asleep, but he would be doing these jumps. And I subsequently found out that it's because when the baby's in the womb, they're used to have being enclosed. And that actually, it's quite scary for them not being, uh, enclosed anymore. And that's, I guess, the argument for, for swaddling them, why that gives them comfort. But it was the most alarming thing as a new parent because you just think, "My God, what's going on? Is he having a seizure?" And nobody tells you. I mean, you know, I've done NCT, like how to, physically put a nappy on until you have a Wriggling human Yeah, it's so hard. And I remember my first night in hospital or like the next morning and being told to wash Stanley and put him in fresh clothing. And it's like, "but how?!" How you've got this thing and you've got to negotiate it over their head and you're scared you're going to damage them, it's, yeah it's really alarming. yeah. And how about your wife's experience? It was traumatic birth for her well. It was a traumatic birth for her. I, I think she had the experience of " I'm immediately in love with my child." The difficulty for her was I think obviously she had to cope with all of that, kind of the lack of sleep and learning everything afresh. And I think over the first few weeks what she also ended up having to do was to start worrying about me and why I was struggling. And I think it was a dual thing. I think it was partly "why is Viren struggling?" And "is he struggling with our child or when he's having to look after our child?" We essentially kind of had this kinda shift system where I would do some of the kind of night shifts and then she would take over. And I think for her there was a concern about "is Viren okay?" but "is Viren okay to look after my child?" as well. And that, that was really tough for her. I think. I think one of the difficulties when talking about my own experiences is that it's not just my experience, it's my experience and how it affects my partner as well. And as difficult as it was for me, it was much more difficult for her not only having to look after her health after the birth of our child, she then had difficulty breastfeeding and that contributed to a whole series of, of difficulties long term as well. Um, so we were always kind of in and out hospital. The first couple of weeks Jesse wasn't eating very well, he wasn't feeding well, so we were back in the hospital. Um, they had to put a tube down here. I remember this Oh gosh, that must have been so hard to see. PROFESSOR VIREN SWAMI: Those kind of things just... they, they told us this was a normal thing that happens to a lot of babies that they don't feed initially and they sometimes need a little bit of help. But when you have, when you kind of in and out of hospital a lot of the time for really quite what might to other people seem like really minor things, like needing help with breastfeeding or having that child's not eating, feeding well, becomes almost medicalised. This whole process, this whole process isn't so much like this joyful experience that we've been told is going to happen. It becomes almost a medicalised process of you and the clinicians trying to work out what's wrong, "what's wrong here?" Um, and for her that was really tough 'cause I think she wanted the magical experience of wonderful things. And in a lot of ways she had that more than I did. But if, I mean she having to go in and out hospital all the time was not easy. No- the most fundamental thing of keeping your baby alive is feeding. And that's, there are so many emotions related to that. And if you have problems breastfeeding, it can be really, really horrendous and traumatizing. And, there's a lot of shame and guilt felt by women who, for one reason or another, aren't successful at breastfeeding, and yet they're not to blame Absolutely. But it's one of the biggest contributors to, to psychological distress in, in new Mums. Um, but one of the other things we also know is that often this is when, when people say like, men can't get postnatal depression. One of the kind of, one of the kind of justifications of that is often that the experiences that Mums have, um, following birth are unique. And in a lot of ways they are. But that's not to say that the Mums experiences of, say, for example, difficulties with breastfeeding don't also affect the dad. I felt like a complete bystander. Like, what do I do? I feel completely helpless here. The role of the dad is to be able to help and to fix and to do all those things and to kind of solve the problems. And when you're not able to, It kind of makes your role completely useless and going in and out of hospital, my, I just sit there going, I know I need to, to, to do something to fix this, but I don't know, I can't do anything here. Um, likewise, when he wasn't feeding, sitting in hospital, I kind of thought, Well, what do I do? There's nothing for me to do. And I, by that point, I was already struggling with my mental health. I was feeling very anxious about leaving the house. I was feeling very alone in my feelings and very, I was, I was struggling to do basic things. Basically. I was, I was struggling to wake up, I was struggling to, to kind of function normally. Um, and then having to go into hospital was not where I wanted to be at the, in those points, it was, it was really difficult to kind of say, I need to leave the house and go and support my partner at this point. And those experiences were really difficult and there was a lot of shame involved. There was. A lot of shame in saying, firstly, I want some help, but not being able to say that. But then also at that point when my son was struggling to say I'm also struggling, felt really selfish. It felt like this is not the time to say anything. Um, so it becomes internalized. Um, I don't think I, I don't think I had an awareness that I was struggling with my mental health at that point. Then I think if you'd asked me how to say everything's great, that's what all parents go through. Mm, Just tired. PROFESSOR VIREN SWAMI: Just tired, just exhausted. And you know, since then we've done research on this. And one of the, one of the findings that we had, well, one, one of the studies that we had, we presented a case of postnatal depression. In one case we told participants this is a mum, and this, the second case, we told them it's a dad. Completely identical cases, experiences of depression here. But we didn't use the word depression, we simply asked participants to say, "What do you think is going on here?" And when it was a mum, about 90% of participants thought this is postnatal depression. They knew it. And with the dad only about 30% said it was postnatal depression. The top answer was tiredness and exhaustion. So even the way we view a dad experiencing psychological distress in the aftermath of a birth is to say, this is not postnatal depression. We don't use this term for dads. We use the term exhaustion. They're simply tired, which is not a mental illness. Being tired is not a mental illness. Just our language around this is really difficult as well. And that was the term I would use for myself. I was tired, I was exhausted, but I wasn't struggling mentally. I wasn't, I didn't require help at that point. Did you try and speak to your wife, 'cause she could obviously tell something was going on- did you communicate with each other? No, um, I was closed off by this point. I, I think there were points when I was really struggling. I, I would just be sitting in bed crying and not understanding what was happening. And often this was hidden. I wouldn't do it in front of her. I, I think I tried as much. It's not possible to hide depression when you're living with someone, particularly those circumstances, but I think I tried to hide it as much as possible. Um, and I mean, to be honest, I think if, if you saw me, I, I was still going to work, for example, and I don't think any of my colleagues would've known that I was, I was struggling. I went to work, I was functioning. I'd go to the gym occasionally. None of my, none of my friends there would've known anything was wrong. Um, and also because kind of after you have a child, I dunno if this happens to everyone. I certainly kind of became, not, estranged is not the right word. I just didn't see the close friends I had as often as I did previously. And so there were no lines of communication to say, Are you okay? Are you struggling here? Um, I think I, I chose intentionally not to talk to my wife because I think it wasn't about me. And I made that decision quite early on. This process isn't about me, it's about my son. And I can, I can look back now and I'm a really big advocate of supporting the family unit now, but at the time it was "I need to support my son. My son requires care, not me. My wife requires care, not me". Um, It wasn't so much of not being deserving, it was a case of "I'm not the one that requires help, cuz there's nothing wrong with me". Um, and if there's nothing wrong with me, then why are you asking me if I need help? Um, if I'm able to go to work, if I'm able to go to the gym, if I'm able to sit up at two o'clock sometimes and at night and look after my son, that means I'm functioning. I'm not dead. And I, I, if you look at the research, a lot of men, a lot of men who are postnatally depressed talk about the same thing. They talk about this experience of "if I'm not suicidal, if I'm not dead at this point, then I'm okay and I can just wait for better days to come. That experience of joy, it will come. I just need to wait this out. The tiredness will pass, the exhaustion will pass, and at some point things will get better". Do you have a message to men who are sort of feeling that at the moment? It often doesn't get better. Um, we know for example, one in 10, one in 10 men who experience depression will commit suicide. Um, and it's not just about men themselves. Men who are postnatally depressed also take it out on their families. They experience much higher levels of anger towards their partner, towards their children. They're much less likely to do simple things like read and play with their child. Um, and the, the effects on the family are devastating. Postnatal depression in men is much more likely to trigger postnatal depression in Mums, it's also much more likely to affect the cognitive and and linguistic development of their child, how they develop as children. The statistic I, I find often, The one that's most worrying to me is this one about men not reading to their child when they're, when they're postnatally depressed. To me, it seems like such a given, that's what we do with kids. We, we read to them, we teach them how to read and we play with them. If you're postnatally depressed, you haven't got the ability to do that because your ability, abilities worried about how, whether or not you're going to kill yourself today, your, your thoughts are always committed to "how do I work out whether I'm going to survive today?" And if your thoughts are continuously consumed by those, those thoughts of survival, you haven't got the head space to play with your child. You haven't got this head space to, to engage with your child. And there's the idea of waiting for things to get better. Things don't get better on their own. Depression is like that. Depression wants you to get worse. It never gives you opportunities to get better. It takes away so much. It takes away so much from you. And it doesn't give you the space ever to be who you are. And I think if you think it just gets better on your own, it never does. It never does. Um, and there are lots of places people can get help. There are, your GP is a good person to talk to. There are all kinds of mental health services to talk to, Talk to your partner. If you haven't got anyone else to talk to, talk to a friend. Um, don't do what I did. We just wait for things to get better and they never did until I finally had to go and talk to someone. Actually, I didn't even want to go and talk to someone. My wife forced me to, she literally dragged me down the road to the GP and my GP sat with me for five minutes and said, "Viren, you can't just keep going on like this." When she told you that you were going to go to the GP with her, how did you feel? I felt angry. I felt angry that someone was trying to say that something was wrong with me. I didn't have the words. I, I think had I known that postnatal depression was a thing that affects men, at that point, I think I might have been much more open to going and talking to someone about it. But because it wasn't a thing, it wasn't a real thing or real condition- I always had no awareness of it at the time was I had, I had internalized to myself that this is, there's nothing wrong with me. Um, despite everything I was experiencing, despite all the clues, despite all the feelings I was having, um, I didn't think I, I didn't think I'd required help. And even then, like going to the GP just felt like I'm just gonna take up and waste their time. Why am I going to see the GP? I do remember one time asking for help and it was with a health visitor. We'd gone one of the normal checkups, I forget which one it was. It must have been about a year or maybe a year and a half in. Um, and you go for these checkups and you sit with a health visitor, you've got like five minutes with them. And often the conversation is with the mum. And I remember this conversation taking place with my partner. I'm just kind sitting there going, "Okay, I'm here. What do you want? What do you want from me?" Nothing. Okay. Sit in the conversation. And there were conversations about her mental health. And I remember this one time I just piped up and said "I think I might need some help." And health visitor was - I'm not blaming her in the least, 'cause I think it's a lack of time, it's a lack of training, it's a lack of information about how you talk to men - and she just went, "You don't need help. You're the dad." What?! PROFESSOR VIREN SWAMI: Um, "get on with things. You're the rock of the family". And I went, Yeah, I am the rock of the family. I'm never gonna bring this up ever again in my. And in fairness, I said it as a, almost as a kind of joke like I'm having, I'm struggling too, and it's not her fault. I think health visitors in this country are not trained to talk to dads. They're not. They don't receive training, and if you haven't got the training to be able to understand when a cry for help is a cry for help and not a joke, then you're going to miss it. They also don't have time if you've got five or 10 minutes to have a conversation. And often men need a lot more time to be able to vocalize something like depression. And particularly if men don't have the words to be able to say, I am depressed. They're not quite, they're not going to say that. They might say, I'm feeling very angry. I'm drinking much more. Or I'm going to the gym and spending time out the house a lot more than I used to. If you are trained to pick up on those things as cues to depression, and you're much more likely to have conversations with men that might go like, Okay, you might be postnatally depressed, we should think about getting you some help. So I don't blame her at all, but that early experience made me think, I don't talk about this to help to health professionals. They will shame me. They will make me feel like something's wrong. Um, and so I came away thinking, I don't want to have these conversations with, with GPs or anyone else. For anybody in the medical profession listening to this, those words can be so damaging. You know, and I'm so thankful that you're, you are here, you know, you're here and you're chatting to us, but for other dads, that could be the difference between... yeah. ...life or death, and words matter. And understanding matters, and it's very, very hard when everybody's resources are stretched. Everybody's so short of time. But I do understand that fathers and co-parents in the long term plan are going to be screened and that there are plans for that to happen. In the NHS long term plan, it's fathers of whose partners have had a history of mental illness. Um, so it's not all fathers. Um, someone like me would still be missed in this net. I would not get routinely screened. And I think the key is to routinely screen all parents, not just Mums, not just dads whose partners have had a history of mental ill health. I think, I mean if you look at health visiting, for example, a lot of the kind of history, the tradition of it is focused on Mums. And you might argue that's the way it should be. But dads are playing much more of an early role, a much earlier role now in family parenting. And you can make an argument that health visiting should be about helping the family flourish and helping the family to do the best that they can rather than just Mums. And I think for me, had that conversation been had quite early on, not in a jokey way, not in a way that made me feel invisible, not in a way that made me feel like this wasn't the place for me, I think I might have been much more open. I don't know. It's possible I might not have been, but it's possible I would've gone, "actually, you know what? I'm going to think about this a bit more and maybe think about whether I need professional help at this point". It took my wife two years of living with a depressed individual before- I think more or less two years- before she dragged me to the GP and before someone actually said, "this requires care. This is not something you can deal with on your own". Um, but up until that point, this idea that I could just get better on my own was, was the, the dominant one. Um, actually not even that, It wasn't getting better on my own. It was, "there's nothing wrong for me to get better from". Um, so conversations with my wife were often argumentative. She would be, "You need help" and I'd be "I don't need help. What are you trying to say about me?" Um, "what are you saying about my ability to parent to be a father, if you're saying I'm mentally ill." Um, Mm, And obviously in the back of my head as well, there was the, the worry that if I really was mentally ill, I, my son would get taken away from me. Which is a very common worry, isn't it? PROFESSOR VIREN SWAMI: Didn't want to lose him. I didn't want to be away from him. Um, yeah. Did you ever worry about your relationship with him in terms of his care? Did you ever feel that you could be a danger to him? I don't think so. I, I think if anything, I think it was more that I wouldn't be there to care for him. I think there were points when I thought "am I going to, to be here to see him when he's four? Am I going to be able to, to see him grow up?" And it was that, that worried me more. Um, there were points when I was unnecessarily angry. I wouldn't take it out at him. I'd just be angry at everything. Angry at the world, angry at my partner, angry at life in general. And you don't want to be in that state when you're with a one year old or a two year old. You don't want to be angry. And if I wasn't angry, I'd be crying. And again, I didn't want my son to see that. I know he wouldn't have any conception of it. He probably doesn't remember this now. But I didn't want him to see that. I didn't want for him to see this, this horrible person who's broken down and crying all the time. I remember sitting with him a couple of times when he was really young, when he was one or just a few weeks old, and I'd pick him up and he'd start crying and I'd start crying, "Why'd you hate me?" That was the feeling I had, like, "Why'd you hate me? That you'd cry every time I'd pick you up?" And obviously it's completely irrational. It's an irrational thought, now I can see that, but at the time you don't know it. At the time it was like "even my son doesn't love me. My son doesn't need me here". And I think that was the most difficult thought I had. It was, "My family don't need me". And when you, When I started thinking that, at least when I started thinking about "my family don't need me here", it was very easy to go from that to, "Well, I should just kill myself. What are you hanging around for? My wife will take care of my son. She's much better at this than I am." Did you at your lowest have suicidal thoughts? I look back now and yeah, I did at the time I, I don't think I would've admitted to myself they were suicidal. Um, there's always a way of justifying, there's always a way of rationalizing it as completely normal. Um, you can be sitting in bed just thinking, "I should just kill myself now. They don't need me. They won't know the difference. I don't make any difference here anyway". You're sitting in bed thinking those thoughts and just going, "These are just thoughts." And that's the way of rationalising it. That's the way of saying "these are not real things that are going to happen", but then they're also horrible thoughts and this makes you feel worse, and that cycle of just continuously fighting with your thoughts and ... much later, when I was in therapy, I told my therapist, like, when I was feeling this form of depression, it felt like you were in a kind of mist and you're having a conversation, but you don't know who you're having this conversation with. And the conversation is always one sided because the person who's, who's talking back at you is saying "you're a horrible person" and you have got no defense to that 'cause everything that you're experiencing in your life, everything that you're going through, shows you that you're a horrible person. That you can't support your partner, you can't support your child, you can't love them. In fact, I don't think I loved my child until much, much later. And I didn't have that feeling of I need to care for this person because I love him. I need to care for him because he's a baby and he requires care. But I didn't care for him in the same way. And I've, I've often thought, I've often thought this to myself much later on, it's like, "Why didn't I love him? What was missing in me that I wasn't able to love him at that point?" And you know, people say to you "You'll grow to love him." Absolutely. You grow to love your children, but that should be the norm. We should be able to have that conversation, not shame people for not immediately loving someone else. As adults we talk about love as something that develops, something that grows between two people. You don't just turn up and go, "I love you" now. And with a child, it's somehow different with a child, you're told if you don't love your child immediately, there's something absolutely wrong with you. You're not a human being. And yet they're a stranger aren't they? Yeah. They are a stranger. And I think it's doubly difficult for dads because they don't have the experience of bonding with the child in the womb. They don't have the experience, particularly in the first couple of years of breastfeeding or even being in close contact a lot of the time. I went back to work after six weeks and a lot of the time was my partner was looking after our child. Throughout the day, I come back and I do some parenting in the evening, and that was it. There's no opportunities really to bond. And a lot of dads say the same thing. It's not until the child begins to interact, they begin to form a bond. I mean the fact that you had six weeks off is actually unusual 'cause so many dads go back to work like one or two weeks after. And the thing is as well, by the time, you know, a lot of dads come home from work, It's bedtime for the baby and you know, the last thing the mom wants is, is for dad to come in and throw them up in the air when they're trying to get them settled for, for bed. It's so, so tough. What was the turning point for you? What made the difference in terms of your recovery? My wife wrote me a letter. I've still got the letter. I, I keep it, I, I don't want to frame it because it just reminds me of where I was, but she wrote me a letter just saying, "Jesse loves you. He wants you to be here with him." I don't think until that point, I realized how bad I was and how estranged I was, not just from her, but from him and how I wasn't being able to be a dad because of my depression. I think up until that point, there'd been a kind of, the, the kind of conversation in my head was, "everything is fine. Everything's okay", but until someone says to you "because of what you're going through, you're not being the best parent you can". Until I internalised that for myself and that's when I think it clicked that something was wrong. But even then, I struggle to, to ask for help. I struggle to want to receive help because I felt like if I went to my GP, I'm going to be wasting their time because I know what they'll say- "This is not depression. You can't be depressed following the birth of a child. You should be joyful. You should be happiest moment of your life." And then the other turning point was actually going to see my GP and I sat down with her for five minutes. She's got 10 minutes in total to see me. And I said, "This is what I've been going through". And she said "Viren, why didn't you come see me earlier?" And I think for, for someone in a position, especially after my kind of experience with the health visitor for someone in a position of healthcare to say to me "This is depression." And to not make a deal about it, to not... not make it about being shameful to kind of go, "This is what a lot of people experience. There's nothing wrong with experiencing this", and to ask for help for this should be the norm, not the other way around. And, and crucially, it's not your fault. It's not something you've brought upon yourself, and I think that's the hard thing. You know, it still feels, gosh. I mean, there's been a lot more talk about mental health over the last couple of years since the pandemic, but there, there still is, you know, huge amount of shame and stigma involved. What would you say to any dads listening now who are relating to what you are saying, but have so far been too frightened or in denial or unwilling to seek support? I think a lot of men who are depressed often think they can do it on their own. Um, and this is a common thing we see with a lot of men when they internalise this and they talk about their masculinity and how it's almost feminine to ask for help. I often say to them, You know what? What's the most masculine thing you can do is to look after your family, to care for your child, to care for your partner, and to be able to do that. Sometimes we need to ask for help. Sometimes we don't know what the difficulty is that we require help with, and sometimes just having a conversation is the starting point for a different journey that you go on. I've often said there isn't a single pathway into care. There are lots of different pathways into care, for one individual that might just be having a conversation with your partner and saying "I'm struggling with this. I don't know what to do here". For another man, it might be about going to have a conversation with the GP and getting medication, for someone else entirely it might be about entering into a period of psychotherapy for a while. I don't prescribe a format or a route into recovery, but that is the most important thing, that you can't fight depression on your own. Depression is something, it's, it's debilitating. And if you don't receive help, if you don't get help, the likelihood of recovery is, is minuscule. It doesn't get better on its own. It never does, it's not how depression works. Depression ultimately is here to take your life. I've talked to lots of men about this and often the difficulty is that first step of getting help and, and being able to take that first step is really difficult. And often they need an impetus. They need to see that something is detrimental. And like I always say, you know, obviously at the time I was the same. But looking back, I know now what I didn't know then, which is that if you keep going down this route of non help seeking, what will eventually happen is that it will take its toll on your partner. It will take it toll on your children. And that's not what you want. Even if you frame this in the most positive masculinist way you can, you want to be this strong man. The strong man cares about his family. The strong man looks after his family. And if you don't want to get help, you are showing signs of weakness. Cause you're not caring about the people who require care. I think that's incredibly powerful and I think, yeah, you know, I think Mark Williams puts it as the quicker you get help, the quicker you recover, and that's so important for the family. True. I do think, though, I think there's also this idea, which I don't think I, I necessarily believe that once you are in care, everything gets better. It took me a very long time to get to a place where I was able to parent my child in a way that I was happy with. Um, it's often not a linear process either. You don't just go into care and suddenly everything's wonderful and you're on a trajectory towards... God no! It's, it's like a jagged line, isn't it? And Horrible periods when even when I was in therapy, I... what's the word I'm looking for? ...fall back down and pick yourself up. And even in therapy, I was still suicidal for a long time. and that's actually a normal -not, necessarily the suicidal ideation- but it's normal have good days and then bad days. And I was lucky because I was able to go to the Cedar House support group, and I remember there was times when I felt so great and it was like, "I don't need to be here anymore, I feel great! I don't have a problem anymore. You know, everything's rosy!" And then a week or two weeks later, I would be back to rock bottom, except I wasn't rock bottom, I was a little bit better. And you find that the bad days start gradually -and it is a gradual thing- get less and less -either less and less in in terms of the time or in terms of the intensity. But it is you know, it is a very jagged line and that it's okay, you're not, going backwards. Just think of the long game. That's a very difficult thing to to see when you are, when you're consumed by thoughts of now and how horrible you are now. It's really difficult to set that aside and look to see "if I get care, I'll be better in the future". I think the one thing I would say is even though that that's not a linear process, it's not a straightforward process, you're in a safer space. For me, as soon I was doing psychotherapy, I was in the safer space for myself, for my child, for my family. And like you say, you take one step every single day and today is better than it was yesterday. And that mist that I talked about, it suddenly begins to evaporate, and you realise you're having this conversation not with anyone else, with yourself. It's been yourself this whole time telling you that you're a horrible person. And I think once, once you've got to that point, whether it's through medication, whether it's just through talking, talking to a friend or a partner, or talking to a psychotherapist, you suddenly realize these thoughts were completely irrational and they weren't my fault. And I think that's probably the really important thing, that even though you are depressed, it's not your fault that you're depressed, never is your fault. And you can blame your brain, You can blame your neurochemistry, blame anyone else you want. But until you get to that point to say, "This is not my fault, what I've gone through", things don't get better. And you'll always have this continuous argument with yourself in the mist sitting there going "I'm a horrible person. I'm a horrible person". And I think that's why for me, psychotherapy was really important. It provided a scaffold to say, "Let's look at this in a rational way. Let's understand this. And here you are safe". You can have these conversations in a way that you're not having a conversation with this invisible person in the mist. You're having a real conversation with someone , and they helped you rationalise it. I think one of the really important things for me in psychotherapy was having a conversation where someone said, "You're not a horrible parent." I think for the first time I suddenly went, "This is possibly true. I'm not a horrible parent. I can actually do this. I'm a good person, I'm a good parent." ...I remember taking Jesse into therapy once because she wanted to see how we interacted, and obviously it's a stilted interaction because you know, someone's watching you play. And she said, "You know what Viren? It's not the worst I've seen. I've seen people who can't even do basic playing. And you're doing that, you're doing that here." And I think in my head, I'd set up this goal, this ideal that I had to be the most wonderful parent in the world. And often you don't, you just need to be there. And obviously suicide, it's like depression takes that away from you. You're not there. And I think once you start getting past that, and once you start, once you know you're on the road to recovery, things get slightly better and you suddenly got more time to play and you're suddenly more time to, to want to read and interact and do fun things with your child and your partner. And they don't have to be Instagram friendly 'going out and doing these incredible activities' and, you know, having mud kitchens in your back garden. It's just the small things and those pockets of time, and even if it's five, 10 minutes of just properly focusing on what they're doing, you know, that is caring. Yeah. The one thing Jesse remembers- he doesn't remember much, obviously he was one and two- he sometimes says to me, "Daddy, I used to sleep on your chest a lot". And I'd say, "Yeah, you did." Aw! But that's what I would do when I wanted to cry, I would put him on my chest and I'd have a cry and he'd fall asleep on me. But is those little things that seem to matter more to him than all the wonderful things you might be able to do! Yeah. How do you feel about how you are doing now as a dad? How's your relationship with Jesse? Oh, I, I don't know when it happened. At some point I just fell in love with him - it grew and it grew and it grew and you burst with love for your child. I think for me, the other big thing was after psychotherapy finished, I went into a parenting class. It was kind of a continuation of, of psychotherapy. I was the only dad there. There were I think maybe like 12 Mums and I was the only dad. And I'd turn up, I forget what day it was, Tuesday mornings I'd go, and it was just "This is how you parent. This is how you play with your child. This is how you engage with your child at this age" and for me it was, "yes! I wish someone had told me this stuff before!" Just things like basic parenting, how you set boundaries, how you reward, how you play, how long you should play for. And it was, I think like an eight week course. And it was brilliant. It completely changed my outlook on how I go about things. Um, I came away from that course just feeling much more confident as a parent. And I think coincidentally, probably around that point, I think I started to feel a connection with Jesse. Also by that point, by age two he was much more interactive and he was much more, um, engaging. I still remember being fearful of taking him out on his own without anyone else. Not so much worried that I would do anything to hurt him or hurt myself, but just the anxiety of stepping out. 'Cause for a year and a half I hadn't done it. I'd been so anxious about taking him out on my own. And that wasn't just about anxiety around him, it was anxiety about me. I, I struggled a lot of the time. I had to go to work and going to work was a 20 minute process. It was put your foot outside the door, put your foot outside the door and you can, you can do this. And then walk, walk to the tube station, Keep walking, keep walking. And I, continuous conversation. I remember taking him out for the first time. I forget where we went. It was probably just to the park or something. And for me it was just, Oh, I can do this. This is doable. And yeah, I love him now, to bits." You were just telling me about your first trip to the cinema together. Yeah, that was right in the middle of my depression. I remember we went to see, to see, like I said, the eye lift dogs and he was still a baby then. Now we to cinema. Favorite thing in the world, not necessarily mine. Cause you have to watch horrible cartoons all the time. What I find is when you're doing something like that, you know, when he is a bit older, you can easily have a nap. no, I, yeah that one. Um, but he's got this thing where he'll go, "Dad, wake up. You've fallen asleep! You need to keep watching! So he's like the sleep police. But yeah, and my local cinema's got these reclining seats as well, so you can have a quick doze! Brilliant, and, you've got all the goodness to come of actually going to see movies that you're both excited to see together I actually I took Stan to see 'Live and Let Die' the Bond film, which is my favourite ever Bond film 'cause uh, yeah, I'm showing my age now, Roger Moore was my Bond. And, uh, Stan really loved it and it's so exciting when you get to share those things. But for anybody listening, especially if they've got you know, a baby is, look into your local cinema because I was lucky in that I was able to, to go to the Picturehouse and they had something called Big Scream, and that was an absolute lifeline for me when I was struggling with postnatal depression because it meant you could actually do something for you as an adult, as a person, as an individual. But it was like going to the cinema, but if you needed to do a nappy change in the middle of it, or if your baby was sick on you, it was fine. If, if your baby started crying, you could take them out. But it was actually somewhere you could go and get a nice coffee, you know, a bit of cake if you wanted a treat. And yeah, you, you felt yourself again for that period of time. And yeah, a lot of cinemas are doing it now. And, for me, it was a game changer. Yeah. But, um, Wow. I could talk to you for hours Viren. Did it make any difference having the life experience, but also the professional, academic side of things, because when I go through bouts of depression and anxiety, I know rationally in my head, these are just thoughts. But when you are sucked into that world, you can't it. It's, you can't snap out of it. It's all consuming. If you wanted an example of someone who has all the professional training, all the professional knowledge, and still struggled I'm that person! I mean, you'd think I'm the last person who'd experienced depression following the birth of a child. Especially, I've done the work, I've done the research, I understand this, I understand all the kind of issues around masculinity and asking for help, and I struggled. It's indiscriminate. We've just done some recent work in fact, showing that the potential to be depressed after the birth of a child exists in everyone. And what we mean by that is the period after the birth of a child is incredibly stressful, and those triggers are often triggers for depression. And this idea that anyone can be immune, whether it's because of your gender or your age or your class or anything else is nonsense. Everyone has the potential to be depressed. And particularly if you're going through an incredibly stressful period of your life. If you don't have support, if you don't have care in the world, if you don't have basic things that you might need to support yourself as scaffold, you will struggle. The flip side to that is nothing shameful about that. It is an experience that so many people go through and to ask for help isn't a shameful thing. it is in fact the most powerful thing you can do precisely because it's not easy to ask for help, and it's not easy to get help. but it is, it is there. It absolutely is And I think one of the things we also find is that a lot of the time once men are given the space to talk, they often do want to talk. It's just that these spaces are often closed down to them. They're often either invisible or they're not provided because we think that men don't need them or men themselves don't think they need them. I think it's easy to blame society and easy to blame health services and it's, It is true. I mean, if you look at health services, historically and traditionally, a lot of kind of postnatal care was directed at mums. It's starting to change, and they're kind of in my local area, for example, there are stay and play services, mainly aimed at dads for example. That's beginning to change, but I think it's still often kind of this, this, this presented as this binary. We've got services for mums and we've got some new services for dads. And we're not talking about this holistically. We're not talking about the family unit as a whole. We're not talking about helping one individual who's struggling within that family unit because their struggle will impact the rest of the family unit. I think that's what's missing still. And we're still talking about care for dads or we're talking about care for Mums. We're not talking about care for families and that's what's needed. Yeah. And well, whatever your family looks like, you know, because so many, so many families in 2022 and so many families in Britain aren't, aren't the classic 'mum, dad, and 2.5 children'. And when you are talking about risk factors, if you look at communities like the LGBTQ plus community, same sex families and trans families that often they, they do not have the support networks around them. They don't have family support and we absolutely should be talking holistically. And I think what you were saying about the parenting class sounds brilliant because for any job you get training and the most important job we can do as human beings is to raise the next generation. So why aren't we getting better training for that? I, I think that having gone through this And, come out the other side, I think the two things I would say that would make the biggest difference almost immediately, one is routine, routine screening of all new parents. Not just Mums, and not just Mums, not just dads whose partners may have a history of mental illness. I think all parents should be screened for, for mental illness or, or risk of mental illness following the birth of a child. The other is, I was almost gonna say mandatory parenting classes, but I think that would be a bit much, I think the offer of parenting classes in the same way that a lot of local areas offer NCT as their first port of call. I don't think that should be the first port of call. I think maybe even combining NCT with later parenting classes, I think had I had the tools to understand how to parent before I became a dad, I think I had been a much better position. I think my, my expectancies and my reality of my lived experience, there would've been very different. Having to learn on the job was tough, and having to learn on the job when you're struggling with conversations in your head about depression are even tougher. Yeah. I think parenting classes are brilliant. I think everyone who is struggling, particularly if you're struggling to find that emotional bond with a child, parenting classes are brilliant and helping you understand what is a bond at that age. To expect a child at one or two to love you in return is probably too much, but you can begin to understand how they love you. Yeah. Yeah. And, and how small things can make a big difference that, you with them for 10 you. difference. Yeah. Yeah. And it it doesn't have to be a big gesture. It doesn't have to be a grand event, it is just little things, you know, Just even speaking to your baby when they can't understand you, that's great because again, it's all helping their cognitive development.. You know, Thank you, thank you so much for, for being so brave and open in sharing your story. It's moved me to tears, , as you can see, I've been like trying to do, uh, subtle sniffs. Um, yeah, I mean it's been so powerful and, for any parents out there struggling please, please speak to somebody. You are not alone. You will not be the first person to have said these things. Um, and, you know, help is available and it really does make a huge difference. And for any dads, I would put you immediately to Fathers Reaching Out and to Music, Football, Fatherhood.. Both organizations were set up by dads who were feeling exactly the same as you are feeling now. So, uh, you are in a very, very safe space. But Viren thank you so much for your time today and, yeah, looking forward to catching up with you in later years to know about which amazing films you're taking Jesse to, I mean Isle of Dogs. That's a pretty good start! It was a good start. It's been downhill from there. Probably not by his standards though. I Yeah, you've got a lot of crap to cover. I've been there. Thank you so much. if you've enjoyed this episode of Blue MumDays, please like and subscribe. It really does make the difference in helping other people find it,
