Before he first held his newborn daughter in June, Josh Perotti put in some work to prepare for her arrival.
Every Saturday for about nine weeks, he met at the library with a friend and one of Brightpoint’s Fathers & Babies facilitators. And the three men talked – about all sorts of things, but mostly about managing stress and emotions, and finding gratitude in all the hard, beautiful, messy, joyful moments of parenting.
“It was different than what I expected but in a good way,” said Perotti, an architect who lives in Bloomington with his wife, Brooklynn, and their daughter, Lily (pictured in the above family photo). “I didn’t even know how much it helped me until I was in the thick of things.”
Consider this sobering statistic: Research shows that one in 10 fathers experience postpartum depression.
Developed by researchers at Northwestern University, Fathers & Babies aims to help dads better manage their stress and emotions to support their own mental health so they can be better dads and partners, too. The program – a blend of cognitive behavioral theory, mindfulness and psychoeducation – is designed for dads whose children are prenatal to 1-year-old.
Brightpoint and Northwestern are partners in growing the program to serve more fathers in Illinois. And Brightpoint is blazing new ground by piloting the first group-based version of the program in the country, which has the added benefit of building community.
Beginning Sept. 15, Brightpoint will be launching a new virtual cohort of the Fathers and Babies program – free and open to any dads who could use the support.
“There can be a lot of stigma around mental health,” said Jaime Hamil, director of innovation and implementation at the Mothers & Babies Program at the Center for Community Health at Northwestern University
“But if I’m a dad in a place with other dads and I can share and hear from them and learn from them – from other dads and even fatherhood specialists – I’m not going to feel as alone,” said Hamil, one of the researchers who developed the Fathers & Babies model.
“That’s what we see at Brightpoint, which I think is so unique and innovative,” she added.
A program built for dads
The Fathers & Babies concept is rooted in the similar but more established Mothers & Babies intervention, which dates back to the 1990s, beginning as a group-based intervention for Latina women, Hamil said. Darius Tandon, Hamil’s colleague who is director of the Center for Community Health at Northwestern, adapted it as a one-on-one intervention and specifically for home visiting.
Suffice to say, Mothers & Babies has proven to be effective. Decades of research and randomized controlled trials have shown it to prevent the onset of major depression, and reduce depression, anxiety and stress during the perinatal period and up to the baby’s first year, Hamil said. Mothers & Babies is one of two interventions for postpartum depression recommended by the U.S. Prevention Taskforce.
In 2016, Hamil and her colleagues developed the Fathers & Babies program. Importantly, the program doesn’t have to be delivered by licensed mental health therapists. Home visitors, early child care providers and fatherhood specialists can be trained to facilitate the conversations in programs and relationships that already exist.
Focusing on gratitude
Brightpoint has three Fathers & Babies facilitators – all of them fatherhood specialists – who have been trained by Hamil’s team at Northwestern. This past spring, Brightpoint launched its first pilot of the program both virtually and in-person, serving more than 100 fathers in total.
The participant feedback was very promising.
“I was blown away,” said Earl Kloppman, program manager for Brightpoint Fatherhood Services. “It was all positive. When we measured the before and after in a retrospective one-time setting, a lot of the increases in these areas were in the 90 percents.”
Part of the power of the Fathers & Babies approach is that it helps dads to better understand the connection between their thoughts and emotions. In doing so, it helps them to appreciate what makes them happy – and to not get stuck in the inevitable negative thoughts that we all have.
Happier, more engaged dads mean better outcomes for kids and families, Kloppman said.
“A child’s trajectory can be influenced by the healthy relationships when they’re young in that birth-to-three area,” Kloppman said.
For Perotti, the Bloomington dad, his fatherhood journey is just beginning. But he’s feeling grateful, if a little short on sleep.
“It’s such a great resource to have in the community,” Perotti said of the program. “It can be easy to feel overwhelmed at times, but (Fathers & Babies) helped me to look around and appreciate the smiles and all the little things that make me happy.”