Abstract
Women’s partners may act as facilitators of professional help-seeking for mental health problems in the postpartum period. This study aimed to examine the sociodemographic and clinical correlates of men’s intentions to recommend professional help-seeking to their partners if they display postpartum mood and anxiety disorders and to explore the relationship between gender-role conflict and the intention to recommend help-seeking. A cross-sectional study included 214 adult men in a heterosexual relationship with a partner within the reproductive age. Men presented a high intention to recommend professional help to their partners. All dimensions of gender-role conflict were directly associated with the intention to recommend professional help-seeking (p < 0.05). High levels of gender-role conflict (dimensions success, power and competition, and restricted emotionality) were found to lead to increased levels of stigma and lower levels of intention to seek professional help, which, in turn, translated into lower intention to recommend help-seeking. These results emphasize the importance of developing universal awareness-raising and education campaigns directed at men aiming to reduce levels of gender-role conflict and stigma, and normalize the use of mental health services, to increase men’s intentions to recommend professional help-seeking to their partners.
Highlights
Mood and anxiety disorders are prevalent conditions in the perinatal period
Type of recruitment was associated with some of the study variables; it was included as a covariate in the subsequent analyses
Having a higher monthly income was associated with a greater intention to recommend professional help-seeking to a partner in the postpartum period
Summary
Mood and anxiety disorders are prevalent conditions in the perinatal period. In most cases (64%), the clinical symptoms of anxiety experienced during pregnancy continue to occur into the postpartum period [1,2]. A study conducted within the Portuguese population found that only 13.6% of Portuguese women with clinically relevant depressive symptoms in the perinatal period seek professional help [10]. These results have been the subject of attention and concern, since not treating this symptomatology can lead to harmful effects for the woman herself [12], but for the mother–child interaction [13,14], the child’s development [15,16,17,18,19], and the broader family system [20]
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