HealthyDads.ca: What Do Men Want in a Website Designed to Promote Emotional Wellness and Healthy Behaviors During the Transition to Parenthood?

BACKGROUND: Up to 18% of men experience depression and/or anxiety during the transition to parenthood. Interventions designed specifically to promote the mental health of men during the transition to parenthood are scarce. Internet-delivered interventions may be acceptable and far-reaching in enhancing mental health, parenting knowledge, and healthy behaviors in expectant or new fathers. OBJECTIVE: To guide the development of Healthydads.ca, a website designed to enhance mental health and healthy behaviors in expectant fathers, a needs assessment was conducted to identify fathers’ perspectives of barriers to seeking help for emotional wellness, informational needs, and factors affecting the decision to visit such a website. METHODS: One hundred and seventy-four men whose partners were expecting, or had recently given birth, in 3 Canadian provinces (Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta) completed a Web-based survey inquiring about information needs related to psychosocial aspects of the transition to parenthood, lifestyle behaviors, parenting, and factors associated with the decision to visit a father-focused website. RESULTS: Most men (155/174, 89.1%) reported accessing the Internet to obtain information on pregnancy and spent an average of 6.2 hours online per month. Seeking information about parenting on the Internet was reported by 67.2% (117/174) of men, with a mean of 4.4 hours per month of online searching. Top barriers to seeking help to improve emotional wellness during the perinatal period were: no time to seek help/assistance (130/174, 74.7%), lack of resources available in the health care system (126/174, 72.4%), financial costs associated with services (118/174, 67.8%), and feeling that one should be able to do it alone (113/174, 64.9%). Information needs that were rated highly included: parenting/infant care (52.9-81.6%), supporting (121/174, 69.5%) and improving (124/174, 71.3%) relationship with their partner, work-family balance (120/174, 69.0%), improving sleep (100/174, 57.5%), and managing stress (98/174, 56.3%). Perceiving the website as personally relevant (151/174, 86.8%), credible (141/174, 81.0%), effective (140/145, 80.5%), and having an easy navigation structure (141/174, 81.0%) were identified as important factors related to a first website visit. Providing useful (134/174, 77.0%) and easy to understand (158/174, 90.8%) information, which was also free of charge (156/174, 89.7%), were considered important for deciding to prolong a website visit. Providing the possibility to post questions to a health professional (133/174, 76.4%), adding new content regularly (119/174, 68.4%), and personal motivation (111/174, 63.8%) were factors identified that would encourage a revisit. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings demonstrate that there is substantial interest among expectant and new fathers for using Internet-delivered strategies to prepare for the transition to parenthood and support their mental health. Specific user and website features were identified to optimize the use of father-focused websites.