Fathers’ mental health and coping strategies: a qualitative study in Mwanza, Tanzania
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To investigate the nature of paternal mental health problems, their causes and the coping strategies used by fathers of young children under the age of 2 years. DESIGN AND SETTING: We conducted in-depth interviews with fathers, mothers, community leaders and community health workers as well as focus group discussions with fathers-only, mothers-only and mixed groups of fathers and mothers. Respondents provided their perspectives on the psychosocial challenges affecting fathers and how fathers responded to their mental health problems. Data were triangulated across stakeholders and analysed using thematic content analysis. SETTING: The study was conducted in four communities in Mwanza, Tanzania. PARTICIPANTS: The total sample included 56 fathers, 56 mothers and 8 community stakeholders that were equally distributed across the four communities. RESULTS: Respondents highlighted a spectrum of mental health concerns affecting fathers, including elevated parenting stress, depressive symptoms, and anxiety. Causes of paternal mental health problems included poverty, child-related concerns, marital problems and family illness. When asked about paternal coping strategies, both fathers and mothers shared that fathers mostly turned to negative coping strategies to manage their distress, such as paternal alcohol use and poor conflict resolution strategies. However, respondents also shared how some fathers used positive coping strategies, such as seeking out social support from their family and friends, engaging in exercise and leisure activities and relying on their faith. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, this study highlights the importance of supporting positive mental health among fathers. Our findings can inform the design of psychosocial programme components that can be integrated within parenting interventions to promote the well-being of specifically fathers and ultimately improve the family caregiving environment.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".