Antidepressant use history in men increases the likelihood of needing medication after having a child.

New fathers are over 30 times more likely to take antidepressants in the first year after having a child, if they have a recent history of the treatment, finds a new study by UCL researchers.

The research, published in JAMA Network Open, analyzed information from over 500,000 primary care electronic health records from the IQVIA Medical Research Database, from January 2007 to December 2016.

These included 90,736 men who had had a child in the previous year and 453,632 men who did not have a child. The team then examined how many men in each category had received an antidepressant prescription.

The researchers found no difference in antidepressant treatment between the two groups.

However, the results showed that having a history of antidepressant treatment made fathers over 30 times more likely to need treatment again after they had a child. Consequently, the researchers suggest that it could be beneficial for these men to have a mental health check-up with their GP in the first year after having a child.

Antidepressants are one of the most common treatments for depression, yet there is little information on how many fathers are prescribed treatment in the year after having a child, and how this compares to men who haven’t recently had a child. Alongside previous antidepressant use, the researchers found that social deprivation was also a key factor as to whether new fathers were prescribed antidepressants.

Ref: Association of recent fatherhood with antidepressant treatment initiation among men in the United Kingdom,, JAMA Network Open, DOI-10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.16105