We need to tackle suicide rates among new fathers

Dads are seven times more likely than mothers to take their own life in the early stages of parenthood

- Olivia Petter

Atlas was a day old when he suddenly stopped breathing.

“He was born perfectly healthy and everything else had been fine,” recalls his father, Mike, 31. “We thought he’d just been sleeping. But then, out of nowhere, we noticed something was wrong.” Thanks to his job as a youth worker, Mike had recently been trained in infant CPR. “I managed to resuscitate him while we were on the phone to 111, who quickly sent an ambulance.”

Despite not breathing for five minutes, Atlas survived, with doctors later speculating this was a near-miss case of sudden infant death syndrome, which affects around 200 babies in the UK each year. But the experience took a severe toll on Mike, who has autism and a history of poor mental health, as well as his partner, Maz. “Both of us had postnatal depression and PTSD,” he says, recalling how he became completely withdrawn and rarely left the house in fear of Atlas suddenly being unable to breathe again. “I felt completely overwhelmed, isolated and, at my lowest, I was ready to take my own life,” he says. What ultimately stopped Mike from doing this was his son. “At a critical moment, I heard Atlas crying. I went to pick him up, and it just reminded me of the bond I had with him.”

It would take Mike another year to tell Maz the extent of his poor mental health. But he did seek help from Dad Matters, a service provided by the charity Home-Start that he’d seen advertised on flyers in the hospital when Maz was pregnant. “I was matched with a coordinator, Dan, who checked in on me every week. Through that support and the support I received from Maz, I was able to recover.”