Why supporting fathers’ mental health at work matters

Picture the scene. Frank is in the birthing room with his partner, Julie. She has experienced a very difficult birth and has lost a great deal of blood. The midwife says there has been a placental tear. Julie is barely conscious and needs immediate attention. Frank is holding their new baby girl, Justine. He is looking very distressed and is visibly shaking. This is a real case example, except that all the names have been changed. It was this case that made me realise how much fathers also need support for their mental health, especially where they have witnessed a traumatic birth.

I have been working in perinatal mental health for over 20 years, but this had largely focused on mothers. It is only relatively recently that we started thinking about fathers and partners too. What became clear, through my research and working with new parents who have experienced poor perinatal mental health, is that there are three situations when a father or partner needs more information and support:

1.      To enable them to support their partner, should they become unwell

2.      To support their own mental health

3.      To provide support for fathers and partners who witness a traumatic birth.

I have been part of campaign teams pushing to get fathers more support. Some of that has been successful. For a long time, there was no support for fathers and partners in the perinatal period. Following intense evidenced-based campaigning, in November 2018, NHS England announced that new fathers and partners would be screened for their mental health. In the last year or two, we have seen new support groups emerge through the NHS and charity sector.

More recently, I attended parliament to contribute to a Public Inquiry into birth trauma. I was asked for evidence and professional opinion on what support fathers needed. That report was published in May 2024. It included some valuable proposals for fathers. Since then, we have had a new Government. We will wait to see how much of this will be taken on, but our campaign teams will press for urgent action.

Despite our relative success, there is still one urgent area where fathers and partners need support for perinatal mental health: the workplace! While shared parental leave is being used more than it was, mothers are still more likely to take maternity leave for up to one year postnatally. Many fathers still only take two weeks paternity leave. This is important for so many reasons. While a mother is on maternity leave, she is likely to have easier access to NHS services (such as GPs and health visitors) or charity and third sector support. While there is room for improvement, following campaigns such as those led by the Maternal Mental Health Alliance (MMHA), perinatal mental health support is very much better than it was a few years ago.

As fathers and partners tend to return to work sooner after the birth of their baby, they may not be on the radar of health services. Should any problems develop, these may get missed. The first two weeks after a baby is born can be busy with family and friends visiting. There’s little time to adjust to the new arrival, and then it’s back to work. That might be tricky enough, but if there are complications surrounding perinatal mental health (for either parent), or if the birth was traumatic, this can suddenly become more complex. For the father or partner, any developing signs or symptoms of poor mental health may take longer to emerge – at which point they are at work. Who’s going pick that up? We need resources in the workplace to do just that. Stress responses to trauma, such as the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), can take weeks or months to fully emerge. It can become all the more distressing for the father or co-parent if the new baby has been admitted to a neonatal unit.

So, what can be done? I am not saying that every employer must have a dedicated specialist service to support fathers and co-parents; that is probably unrealistic. However, we need better training within HR and line management to be vigilant to signs and symptoms in new parents, particularly if they are considered more at risk. This could be incorporated into HR risk assessment. Perhaps, NHS services can alert employers when there have been circumstances relating to the birth that could make fathers or co-parents more vulnerable. When they need support, the employer could refer them to local services who can help (if they do not have those services themselves).

Some work is already being done to address the gap in support for new fathers and partners in the workplace. Dr Krystal Wilkinson (Associate Professor in Human Resource Management, Manchester Met University) and her team have produced a Supervisor Toolkit in association with Greater Manchester Police Association of Women in Policing. This toolkit includes provision for fathers, as well as mothers and can also be found in The Parent Gap free resources (see Toolkits).

The inspirational team at This Can Happen have been delivering programmes to support workplace mental wellbeing since 2017. Perinatal mental health support at work is very much on their radar, illustrated very recently when they included a session on this topic at the November 2024 conference. I was honoured to facilitate that session which included expert speakers such as the aforementioned Krystal Wilkinson, Julianne Boutaleb (Consultant Perinatal Psychologist and Clinical Director at Parenthood in Mind), and Jennifer Sharpling (a serving police inspector, with lived experience of poor perinatal mental health). Julianne and Krystal are also working with The Parent Gap, an ambitious development instigated by the MMHA and PANDAS Foundation to revolutionise perinatal mental health support in the workplace.

So, there are good things happening, but so much more we can do. Since retiring from active academic life, I will be continuing to campaign for better perinatal mental health. Support in the workplace is very much a priority.