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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Glob. Womens Health
Sec. Women's Mental Health
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fgwh.2025.1497740
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Postpartum depression is a significant global health challenge that affects mothers, infants, and families. Although various preventive strategies show promise, comprehensive reviews evaluating interventions among pregnant women without a clinical diagnosis of depression remain limited. This scoping review aims to identify and synthesize the existing evidence on proactive postpartum depression prevention programs initiated during pregnancy.Methods: Following PRISMA guidelines for scoping reviews, we systematically searched PubMed and Scopus, supplemented by manual reference reviews. Our search strategy combined terms related to postpartum depression, pregnancy, and preventive interventions. Studies were included if they evaluated interventions conducted during pregnancy, targeting women without a clinical diagnosis of depression, and assessed PPD outcomes using established diagnostic criteria or validated screening tools. Only English-language articles published between 2013 and 2023 were considered.: A total of 49 studies met the inclusion criteria. Interventions were categorized into nine themes: psychoeducation (n=18), home visits (n=6), cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) (n=6), mindfulness (n=6), exercise (n=4), dietary supplements (n=3), interpersonal therapy (IPT) (n=4), consultation (n=1), and inhalation aromatherapy (n=1). Psychoeducational and mindfulness-based interventions consistently reduce PPD risk, particularly when delivered in structured, theory-driven formats and incorporating family support. Digital CBT interventions demonstrated limited effectiveness due to lower engagement, while home-visit and consultation-based interventions were effective when integrated into existing maternal healthcare despite scalability challenges. Exercise and dietary supplement interventions yielded inconsistent outcomes, indicating that factors such as adherence, duration, and intensity are crucial determinants of effectiveness. Conclusion: Various proactive interventions are available to prevent PPD, and this scoping review systematically maps the different strategies used and their outcomes. Proactive, theory-based, and multi-component interventions, particularly psychoeducational and mindfulness programs, demonstrate promising potential. Future research should emphasize evaluating long-term outcomes,
Keywords: postpartum depression, intervention, prevention, Pregnant Women, Scoping review
Received: 17 Sep 2024; Accepted: 25 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Nguyen and Pengpid. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Supa Pengpid, Faculty of Public Heath, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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