Men traumatized by childbirth can suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder,

While sympathy for women who have experienced childbirth is almost par for the course, new research suggests that men need support too, as complicated childbirths can be just as traumatic for the father as the mother.

A qualitative study from Oxford University shows some fathers left so mentally scarred after watching their other halves experience difficult births that they have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), reports the Independent, a U.K. newspaper.

PTSD is a condition usually associated with soldiers who have returned from a war zone or people who have witnessed violent crimes like murder. Yet interview after interview with these fathers show some of them having flashbacks and panic attacks years after the original incident.

Lead researcher Dr. Marian Knight is recognized as one of the U.K.’s most promising leaders in health research and is one of eight U.K. researchers to be awarded the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) professorship.

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"For the dads, it's extremely vivid because they are fully aware of what's going on. Often, we're running around trying to save mum's life, but we need to be thinking about dads as well," she says in a press release.

Knight and fellow researchers interviewed 35 women who experienced a life-threatening complication during childbirth, and 11 fathers or partners, to find out more about their experiences and their long-term impact.

One father was so strongly affected by his wife's emergency cesarean that he remains unable to work seven years after she almost died giving birth to their daughter who needed intensive care.

Darren Dixon, 36, has been diagnosed with PTSD.

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"For the first three years, my flashbacks were off the scale," he tells the Independent. "Suddenly, I'd be able to smell the hospital and the whole room would disappear and I'd be back in that theatre with my wife. I just cried from morning until night and I became agoraphobic."

Mark Booth, 43, says has still has flashbacks of looking through the hospital doors and seeing a placenta lying on the table.

"I didn't know what it was. That was the most traumatic moment for me because I didn't know if the baby was dead or alive, and then two nurses came out with an empty incubator, but didn't speak to me. That's the moment that keeps popping into my head."

The stories tell a common tale of fathers who were left with little information about the care of their wives and child, which resulted in lasting trauma and anxiety.