International Fathers Mental Health Day

Today is International Fathers’ Mental Health Day — and if you’ve never heard of it, that’s kind of the whole point.

It was founded back in 2016 by Welsh advocate Mark Williams and US psychologist Dr Daniel Singley, specifically because paternal mental health is one of the most overlooked areas in the whole conversation around new parenthood. A detailed evidence review just published by Constellation Training (worth a read: https://blog.constellationtraining.co.uk/fathers-mental-health-pressure-nobody-asks-about/) lays it out clearly — around 1 in 10 dads experiences depression during pregnancy or in that first year. If the mum is also struggling, that figure jumps to somewhere between 25 and 50%. And yet most services are still built entirely around mothers, leaving dads feeling like bystanders in their own family’s story.

Meanwhile, male suicide in England and Wales hit its highest rate since 2000 last year. 17.6 per 100,000 men. That’s not a statistic to scroll past.

The biggest barrier to getting help? We tell ourselves it’s not for us. That we should just get on with it.

A lot of us were trained — by life, by service, by culture — to absorb pressure and not show it. But carrying it alone isn’t strength. It just looks like it from the outside.

So — honest question for the group. When things have been heavy, what’s actually helped you? Not what should help. What actually did.

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International Fathers Mental Health Day