Exploring Serious Games in Supporting Postnatal Depression: Narrative Review

TL;DR

This paper reviews how serious games can help people with postnatal depression by encouraging them to seek support, but finds very few games specifically designed for new parents.

Contribution

The paper identifies a lack of serious games targeting postnatal depression and proposes a mobile game tailored to new parents with specific design elements.

Findings

Only two studies directly related to postnatal depression were found, highlighting a significant research gap.

Serious games can promote help-seeking behaviors through gamification, education, and supportive interactions.

Mobile platforms are suggested as the most suitable format for new parents due to their unique needs and time constraints.

Abstract

Postnatal depression (PND) is a clinical sign of sadness in certain individuals after childbirth. PND affects the mother, the baby, and the whole family. PND is now recognized as a public health concern worldwide. The global prevalence of PND is approximately 17.22%. However, less than half of those affected seek help, which means over 50% of PND cases are left untreated. Current reviews lack focus on digital interventions targeting parents in late pregnancy or postnatal stages. Existing studies prioritize symptom relief over fostering help-seeking behaviors.

This study aims to identify what serious games have been applied to support the treatment or help-seeking of PND and what gaps are still left.

Eligibility criteria for this review included full-text papers from 2015 to 2024 from conferences or peer-reviewed journals that were relevant to serious games to support help-seeking behaviors for individuals with depression. Seven research databases and publisher repositories were used. The final search was conducted in March 2025, and a thematic analysis was used to identify and organize recurring themes. As this review adopts a narrative approach, predefined eligibility criteria, a structured search strategy, and review by an interprofessional team were used to reduce selection bias.

Only 2 studies related to PND were identified. After expanding the search string to depression, 13 studies were included in this review, and the studied games were divided into 3 help-seeking categories: promoting knowledge, reducing stigma, and raising awareness. This review identified that gamification, educational messages, and supportive character interactions could enhance engagement, build coping skills, and promote help-seeking in a practical, parent-friendly format. Nonetheless, this paper is limited by the reliance on depression literature due to scarce PND-specific studies, the quality of included studies, the exclusion of non-English language publications, and the use of common but select academic databases. These factors may affect generalizability but also serve to highlight critical gaps for future research and targeted intervention design.

There is a dearth of studies directly related to PND. Existing games commonly use narrative storytelling and interactive scenarios to promote empathy, correct misconceptions, and encourage help-seeking in broad depression. However, few are designed specifically for new parents, whose unique needs—such as time constraints—make mobile platforms the most suitable format for effective engagement. The authors propose that the future interprofessional codevelopment of a mobile serious game tailored to new parents would address the intervention and literature gaps identified in this review. It is argued that key design elements should include an emotionally engaging narrative, meaningful player choices, real-life parenting scenarios, calming visuals, and accessible, low-pressure gameplay. This review contributes to the progression of serious game research, with a focus on addressing the needs of an often underserved and undertreated PND population.

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