Relationship between personality traits and postpartum depression in Pakistani fathers

by Najam ul Hasan Abbasi, Ahmad Bilal, Khair Muhammad, Saba Riaz, Shakeela Altaf

The previous studies have found an association between Big Five personality traits and postpartum depression in women. The present study aimed to find out an association between Big Five personality traits and postpartum depression in a sample of Pakistani fathers. A total of 400 Pakistani fathers who had birth of a child in the past 1 month to 1 year period and had been living with their married partners were recruited purposively by using Google Form based survey from the major cities of Pakistan. The Urdu translated versions of Big Five Personality Inventory (BFI) and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) were used as the main outcome measures to assess the relationship between personality traits and postpartum depression. The results found a significant negative and moderate association between Big Five personality traits and paternal postpartum depression except openness which had a weak association and neuroticism which had a positive and moderate association with PPPD (r(398) = .45). The multiple linear regression analysis found that Big Five personality traits significantly predicted paternal postpartum depression (F(5, 394) = 53.33, p = .001) except openness (B = .007, p = .98). The analysis of variance (ANOVA) found significant differences in paternal postpartum depression for age of father (F(2, 397) = 6.65, p = .001, ηp² = .03), spouse age (F(2, 393) = 5.97, p = .003, ηp² = .02), employment type (F(2, 395) = 9.69, p = .001, ηp² = .04) and time spent at home (F(2, 397) = 6.23, p = .002, ηp² = .03) while there were found no significant differences for education (F(2, 397) = 1.29, p = .27, ηp² = .006), marital duration (F(2, 397) = 2.17, p = .11, ηp² = .01), and birth number of recent child (F(2, 397) = 1.48, p = .22, ηp² = .007). The study concluded that Big Five personality traits are significantly correlated with and predict paternal postpartum depression except openness which did not predict paternal postpartum depression. The occurrence of paternal postpartum depression varied significantly for age of father, age of spouse, type of employment and time spent at home.