Introduction
The mental health status of parents plays an important role in the
offspring development (1, 2). While maternal perinatal depression was
well studied, limit studies focused on paternal perinatal depression.
Paternal perinatal depression may affect not only the wellbeing of new
fathers but their partners and offspring as well. Previous studies
demonstrated that paternal perinatal depression was significantly
associated with maternal depression (3), and also related with increased
risk of physical (4, 5), behavioral (6), and emotional problems among
the offspring (7, 8).
Paternal perinatal depression is becoming an international public health
concern. Although the event of becoming a dad is often joyful, fathers
should adapt to some potentially stressing reproductive events,
including prepare abundant financial support, provide infant care and
support to their partners during the reproductive period. Fathers in the
transition of parenthood might be prone to paternal perinatal
depression.
The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first reported in December
2019 in Wuhan, Hubei province and caused a global pandemic. The COVID-19
pandemic poses a great threat to the population’s mental health. The
Chinese government has promulgated the Guidance Manual on the
Prevention and Control of Novel Coronavirus-Infection Pneumonia in the
Community issued by the national government (9). Patients and
accompanies in hospitals are vulnerable to COVID-19 infection. During
the COVID-19 pandemic, some fathers have to caring for their partners to
delivery in hospital. This might increase the psychological crisis of
fathers by the potential risk of infection in hospitals by the dense
flow of people, especially for the children and weak partners after
delivery.
To reduce human to human transmission, maternal caring hospitals
enrolled accompanied fathers based on CT results in the early period of
COVID-19 epidemic. After the popularization of nucleic acid detection,
hospitals divided the fathers with CT, nucleic acid test, and antibody
of COVID-19 in Wuhan. Other public health interventions to control
COVID-19 epidemic including traffic restriction globally, which might
associate with paternal perinatal depression. Moreover, home quarantine
as important method to reduce human-to-human transmission in COVID-19
control, residents stay at home might increase the role of family
function.
Currently, there is no document addressed the prevalence and the
associated factors of paternal perinatal depression during the COVID-19
epidemic. This study aims to investigate the prevalence of paternal
perinatal depression exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic and to determine
the risk factors of paternal perinatal depression. This study could
provide global prevention and control experience for paternal perinatal
depression during the COVID-19 pandemic.