Depression is one of the mental problems caused by mood changes. One of the factors that lead to depression is women giving birth. (Sadok (2012) showed that fathers are prone to depression after the birth of their wives, so far no research has been done to investigate whether exercise before and after childbirth can be related to the level of depression of fathers and mothers. Therefore, The first aim of the present study was to answer this question and the second aim was to compare postpartum depression in mothers and fathers.
Method
The research was of a descriptive-correlation type and was conducted on 68 parents in Tehran. Edinburgh Questionnaire, personal information form with physical activity level was completed. The community standard was that couples have children under two years old. The validity of the Edinburgh questionnaire in Iran has been confirmed, including 10 questions with 4 levels determined (Ahmadi, Qolikhani, 2014).
findings
The average age of the mothers group was 31.03 ± 6.01 and the fathers group was 33.41 ± 5.12 and the average depression of the mothers was 19.06 ± 2.95 and the average depression of the fathers was 21.06 ± 4.06. First, the normality of the data distribution of the dependent variables was verified using the Shapiro-Wilk test. The results of Spearman's correlation test to test the relationship between exercise before and after childbirth and depression in fathers showed a significant relationship between physical activity before childbirth and depression after childbirth (p = 0.010, r = -0.43) and physical activity after There was childbirth and postpartum depression (p = 0.001, r = -0.55). But
This relationship did not exist in mothers for any of these variables before (p = 0.09, r = -0.29) and after delivery (p = 0.25, r = -0.20). The results of the independent t-test to compare the depression of mothers and fathers after childbirth showed that there was a significant difference between the depression of mothers and fathers after childbirth (df = 0.02, p = 66, t = -2.3).
For the first purpose, the results of data analysis in fathers showed that there was a significant relationship (R=-0.43) between prenatal physical activity and postpartum depression.There was also a significant relationship between postpartum physical activity and postpartum depression (R = -0.55). Correlation coefficients indicate the average relationship between these two variables. For the second purpose, the results of the independent t-test showed that in the samples of the present study, there was a significant difference in postpartum depression between mothers and fathers, and according to the averages, it can be seen that the depression of fathers was more than that of mothers. It is concluded that exercise has reduced depression