Montreal fathers are 30% more likely to suffer from psychological distress than elsewhere in Quebec, shows a study released Thursday. More traumatic experiences during childhood, a lack of awareness of support services and a lack of confidence in their abilities could explain this trend.
A survey conducted by the firm SOM with 2,119 dads last March, the results of which were released Thursday by Montreal Public Health, shows that 17% of fathers in Montreal have a high psychological distress index (IDP). In the rest of Quebec, this figure is more like 13%.
“It may seem paradoxical at first sight, but in fact, fathers in Montreal are much more isolated than in the rest of Quebec. In Montreal, there are many fathers who come from outside the country. When they arrive here, their solidarity network is no longer there, ”explains the director general of the Regroupement pour la valorization de la paternité (RVP), Raymond Villeneuve.
According to the study, conducted by researcher and professor specializing in parenting in the Department of Psychology at UQTR Carl Lacharité, one Montreal father in ten has had suicidal thoughts in the past year, a figure once again higher than the Quebec average. (7%). Among fathers with a high IDP, 30% of them had had suicidal thoughts.
Reasons, solutions
Five factors in particular explain these differences. First, Montreal fathers “are more likely than all Quebec fathers to have experienced the most serious forms of violence in childhood”. Indeed, 41% of them say they have suffered psychological attacks, compared to 36% in the rest of Quebec. About 27% of Montreal fathers say they have experienced severe physical abuse, compared to 20% in Quebec, and 13% sexual assault, compared to 9% in the province.
Nearly one in five metropolitan fathers (18%) also report being “dissatisfied” with their co-parenting relationship, compared to 13% at the provincial level. Moreover, 15% of Montreal dads say they have doubts about their parenting skills, while this figure barely reaches 9% elsewhere in Quebec.
It also seems that Montreal fathers are less aware of the resources available to them: barely six out of ten of them say they know “who to contact in the event of a problem”, compared to 73% for the rest of the province. Fewer than one Quebec father with a high IDP consulted a resource for help last year.
For Raymond Villeneuve, the higher cost of living in Greater Montreal is also “inevitably” responsible for this greater distress. “With inflation and the cost of housing on the rise, it’s obvious that it has a connection. The solutions are harder to see when you have less money,” he says.
In his eyes, “there is no magic solution”. “We have to act at different levels. The first is really to make visible the distress of fathers, to name it, since basically, we talk about it very little. When we talk about men, fathers, we are dealing much more with the problems than with their difficulties. We must also send the very clear message to these men that it is okay to have problems, it is okay to ask for help, ”insists Mr. Villeneuve, calling on the authorities to invest more in community resources. “who are at the front”.