serious need-to-know question (what was up with me?)

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back when my daughter was first born, I was going through something weird, something I had never experienced before; extreme anxiety and restlessness.

Okay, here's a rundown of what I was going through:

I couldn't get my mind to wind down. It was like it just kept going and going like that bunny.

I felt like I couldn't get any peace. At the time, I had this job as a security guard in which I had to patrol the grounds in a car. Even there in the car on a rainy, quiet evening, I couldn't get the relaxing peace I was looking for. It all seemed too much. Just everything.

I cut for the first time since I was a teenager. My left arm has 6 scars from very deep cuts I made with a razor blade.

Question: Can men go through postpartum depression?

Oh, and my doctor was trying me on a med called Paxil but these overwhelming feelings started just prior to me taking the Paxil.

I feel like it's happening again.

I'm completely off my Effexor and am now on Lamictal. Every day since I've been off the Effexor, I've been snapping at people and fighting with my wife, letting things get to me. I can't let stuff go.

I feel as though I just want to be left alone for a long time. All alone - no one else but me and my thoughts. I'm even been having some suicidal thinking like when everything's going wrong, I wonder about cutting my wrists or my carotid artery or taking all my my wife's medicine and mine so I don't wake up and making a DNR advance directive. At least people wouldn't have to but up with my anger and pissy attitudes while I adjust to a new med.

well it was a big change, those can be stressfull as hell. I wouldn't go as far as to call it post partum depression though.

In short: yes.

A male in close contact with his partner can experience a range of under appreciated symptoms related to his partners pregnancy.

To start with his partner's pheromones will change as will her behaviour. Not big changes but changes. These changes are designed to trigger changes in the man. These changes increase our desire to provide and at the same time curtail aggression. The changes are neurologically based and built in from birth to make us better fathers. This is becuase we are moving from the hunter seeker to the provider protector and certain instincts need to change.

Furthermore modern society is not kind to the stresses that fathers face. We have a lot of demands secondarily placed upon us as regarding our responsibilities and yet are often not so much as acknowledged by health workers.

I am a single father 50% of the week with three children. I've seen five children brought into this word and have experienced the fully sexist world of childcare from one end to the other. Occasionally GPs let their defences down and admit things as do other health workers but mostly you have to fight to be recognised. Finding a fathers group (they are rare) helps a lot.