HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- Rob Sandler comforted his infant son as he lifted him out of the crib, cooing in his ear while he walked to the living room.

"Something didn't feel right," says Rob Sandler, who developed a male version of postpartum depression.

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If his baby had needed to be soothed three months ago, Sandler, 36, of Houston, Texas, might have handed the baby off to his wife and then found an excuse to leave the house.

"Honestly, it felt like when I was at home, the walls became very, very close in. I wouldn't say claustrophobic, but very cabin feverish," Sandler said.

It turned out that Sandler, a medical device salesman, had more than cabin fever. He recently got an official diagnosis: He has a male version of postpartum depression.

"This comes as quite a shock to men who are expecting this wonderful time of baby bliss with the new baby and a time of bonding," said Will Courtenay, a San Francisco, California-based psychotherapist and founder of Saddaddy.com, who is a leading expert in the United States on paternal postnatal depression.

"Each day in the U.S., 1,000 new dads become depressed, and according to some studies that number is as high as 3,000. That's as many as one in four news dads who become depressed."

"We hear this from a lot of men," Courtenay said. "They can't stand to be around their baby...they can't stand the smell or the sound of their child screaming."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/family/10/13/hm.dads.postpartum.depression/index.html