Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
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A Quantitative Comparative, Prospective Study of the
Couvade Syndrome in the Male Partners of Pregnant Women
within the UK
Arthur Brennan (PhD, MSc, BSc, PGCEA, RNT, RMN, RGN, FRAE,
MILT)
Faculty of Health Sciences
The Sir Frank Lampl Building
Kingston Hill Campus
Kingston University & St George’s Hospital Medical School,
University of London
Kingston-upon-Thames
Surrey KT2 7LB
+44 20 8547 8744 abrennan@hscs.sgul.ac.uk
Introduction
The Couvade syndrome is an involuntary disorder consisting of
psychosomatic symptoms in the male partners of gestational
women (Trethowan and Conlon, 1965; Klein, 1991). It occurs
mainly in industrialised countries around the globe. However, one
case study has reported a Couvade syndrome equivalent in an
African-American woman (who was not pregnant) during both of her
twin sister’s pregnancies (Budur et al, 2005). The course of
symptoms appears to follow a U-shaped pattern over the duration
of pregnancy (Schodt, 1989) as they appear in the first trimester,
temporarily disappear in the second and reappear in the third
trimester. This has been confirmed by the timing of medical
consultations (Lipkin and Lamb, 1982; Quill et al, 1984). The
symptoms classically cease abruptly at birth or shortly within the
postpartum period. Early accounts tended to medicalise the
syndrome as a psychosomatic disorder (Trethowan and Conlon,
1965; Trethowan, 1968). Enoch et al (1967) refer to it as an
“uncommon psychiatric syndrome”. Despite this, the syndrome does
not appear in the nosologies of the DSM-Version 1V, (American
Psychiatric Association, 2000) or the International Classification of
Diseases: ICD-Version 10, (World Health Organisation, 1993). The
reason for this is unclear, but the syndrome is idiopathic and,
according to classic definitions, is not specifically related to physical,
psychological illnesses or injury. While the somatic symptoms of the
syndrome are chronologically connected with pregnancy the fact
that they are not associated with disease in the strict sense of the
term may cause some to question whether they constitute a
syndrome at all? Nevertheless, the syndrome is mentioned in the
Dictionary of Medical Syndromes (Magalini and Magalini, 1997),
where it is proposed as a neurotic disorder which occurs in men
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