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.