Facts: The study
Researchers from the Department of Global Public Health at the Karolinska Institute and the Department of Public Health at Stockholm University have gone through 45 different studies from countries that offer some form of guaranteed parental leave:
Europe: Belgium, Denmark, France, Norway, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Germany.
North America: Canada, USA.
Other countries: Australia, Chile and Japan.
Source: forskning.se
— The beneficial effects are associated with more generous systems for parental leave, for example with longer leave, says Amy Heshmati, PhD student and first author of the study, to the research site.
Heshmati and her two research colleagues from Stockholm University (SU) and Karolinska Institutet (KI), have investigated the connection between parental leave and mental health in parents.
The conclusion is: Parental leave provides protection against mental illness. Both when it comes to depression, general mental illness, mental anxiety, burnout and the need for mental health care.
According to Sol P Juárez, one of the co-authors of the study, psychological problems after childbirth are relatively common: ten to twenty percent of mothers and up to ten percent of fathers are affected.
Now the researchers can see that the positive effects of parental leave remain even later in life – for mothers. For fathers, however, the positive effect is more short-lived.
The researchers produced their results, which have been published in the journal The Lancet, by looking at 45 different studies on the subject that have been carried out in 14 high-income countries (including Sweden) that offer some form of guaranteed parental leave.
— Although we found evidence of protective effects that last several years after childbirth and later in life, more research is needed to substantiate this, says Amy Heshmati, to forskning.se.