Crying Babies Linked To Depressed Dads

(Answer to Riddle: It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky).

An infant’s excessive crying, or colic, has been linked to symptoms of depression in the mother. Now a study in the Netherlands said it might also have a negative reaction on the father.

The finding that continuous paternal depression appears associated with increased risk of colic among infants might inspire future fathers with depressive symptoms to seek treatment, Dr Mike P can den Berg of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam said. He and his colleagues assessed symptoms of depression in several thousand sets of parents when the mother were 20 weeks pregnant. They found that about 12% of the fathers and 11% of the mothers showed signs of depression.

For example, they answered positively to questions about feeling lonely, blue, hopeless, or worthless, having no interest in things, or having thoughts of ending life, the researchers reported in the journal Pediatrics.

The researches assessed parental reports of excessive crying later, when the infants of these parents had reached two months of age.

Overall, 4.1% of depressed fathers, compared with 2.2% of non-depressed fathers, had infants who cried for at least three hours daily on three or more days in the previous week. Corresponding figures among depressed and non-depressed mothers were 4.8 and 2.2 percent respectively.