08:00, 14 May 2026
Words by Cheyanne Bryan, Editorial and Campaign Marketing Executive, London
As Mental Health Awareness Week shines a spotlight on wellbeing, connection, and the importance of open conversations, one charity is working to reshape how the gaming world thinks about mental health, both on-screen and behind the scenes.
Since launching in 2019, Safe In Our World has become one of the leading voices advocating for better mental health support across the games industry. From helping studios tackle burnout and workplace culture to promoting authentic mental health representation in games, the charity has evolved far beyond a simple information hub.
Smiley News spoke with the team about crunch culture, community management, gaming balance, and why video games can be one of the most powerful tools for empathy.
Since 2019, Safe In Our World has massively increased its global reach. We now have ambassadors across the globe helping to promote our resources and share our message with people who need it.
While awareness and information around mental health remain central to what we do, we’ve evolved our offer to include a wealth of tangible, free-of-charge resources. The biggest of these is our Level Up Mental Health programme, available to all games companies globally.
Our goal through Level Up was to remove as many barriers as possible to companies improving mental health support. The primary barriers we see are finances, time, and knowledge. Many of the games companies we work with don’t have an HR person, let alone an HR department, and it can be very cost and labour intensive to seek out guidance on positive workplace mental health practices independently.
Through Level Up, we provide companies with access to heaps of guidance and information available at any time. Whether it’s a mental health policy template or support with promoting better sleep health, we aim to make it as easy as possible for games companies to support the people who make the games we love.
The main way we support the industry is through our flagship Level Up Mental Health programme and our brand-new Mental Health Star Accreditation. These offer support and guidance tailored to the unique needs of the video games industry.
In addition, we advocate for mental health awareness at industry events internationally, seeking to open up life-saving conversations and ensure more people know where to go for support.
Naturally, there’s overlap between our industry audience and our audience of gamers, but we provide a wealth of information and resources for players too. Primarily this focuses on advocacy and awareness. Our website hosts a huge amount of information on different mental health topics.
We believe video games have an incredible capacity to build empathy and understanding when it comes to mental health, so we frequently highlight games tackling these themes to help people connect with important topics.
The reason we built the Mental Health Star Accreditation was to support the industry flexibly, because there are so many different shapes and sizes of games companies.
Generally speaking, we’ll look at things like whether a company has a mental health policy in place; how they tackle mental health stigma and awareness; how they manage stress or change; how they approach personal development opportunities; and whether they support organisational leaders.
What these things look like in practice may vary from company to company depending on their resources. Our free Level Up Mental Health programme offers partners a toolkit designed to help them address these key topics with suggestions and support.
Video games are a really special medium for educating on and highlighting mental health topics because often you — the player — are making the decisions and feeling what the character feels.
In general, it’s amazing to see how many games are tackling complex mental health themes these days. If you are going to represent mental illness in your game, it’s really important to do so respectfully. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a great example of this, as Ninja Theory worked with clinical psychologists and individuals with lived experience to ensure authenticity in Senua’s psychosis. A lot of people who played that game — whether they experience psychosis themselves or know someone who does — felt it helped educate and promote empathy on the subject.
The most important thing is ensuring you’re not contributing to bias and misinformation in your portrayal, because that can seep into cultural consciousness and contribute hugely to stigma around mental health.
It’s all about knowing what’s normal for you, because we all have different lifestyles and levels of stress we can tolerate.
Understanding your baseline and recognising when you move away from that is vital. For example, have you noticed you’ve been declining plans with friends more than normal? Have you been able to keep up with your daily routines, work, or school?
We developed several resources alongside Ubisoft to support finding balance and being a positive online community member. The original toolkit is called the Good Game Playbook, but we also released editions for kids, teens, and parents. Each focuses on recognising stress, stepping away when needed, and interacting positively with others online.
Confidence in signposting people to appropriate support is vital.
Ultimately, community and moderation teams are not trained mental health professionals, though they may deal with a lot of people who are struggling. If you’re not aware of local or national provisions, Safe In Our World’s Find Help page signposts to crisis lines and helplines in over 100 countries, making it a good place to start.
On top of that, the role of a community manager can feel endless and difficult to switch off from. A lot of that role takes place online in the same spaces you might use in your personal time — social media, Discord communities, and so on. Finding ways to strike balance and set effective boundaries is crucial, and it’s something we focus heavily on in our Community Manager Mental Health training.
It’s been amazing to see more and more developers incorporating mental health topics into their games, whether to tell personal stories or raise awareness. The number of games covering these topics is definitely increasing, especially within the indie scene.
In 2024, we ran our first Mental Health Game Dev Champions event, which resulted in a host of incredibly talented amateur developers creating games themed around mental health.
There’s a huge amount of creativity and ingenuity going into how mental health and mental illness are portrayed in games right now, and that’s really exciting to see.
Most importantly: you’re not alone, and recovery is possible.
Visit our website for information and resources, and join our inclusive Discord community. Reaching out, having conversations, and supporting one another can make an enormous difference.
Support the hard work of Safe In Our World by donating directly to help with the operational costs to allow them to continue destigmatising mental health within the gaming community here.
At Smiley Movement, we like to elevate the work of charities across the world. Here are three charities whose causes align with the themes in this article.
Safe In Our World. This gaming mental health charity supports developers, players, and online communities through workplace wellbeing programmes, crisis support training, and mental health awareness initiatives across the games industry. Learn more here.
Take This. This US-based nonprofit works to decrease stigma around mental health in gaming culture by providing educational resources, convention safe spaces, and support for both players and industry professionals. Discover their work here.
Mental Health Foundation. An international charity focused on prevention, awareness, and research to improve mental health worldwide, promoting community connection and wellbeing through campaigns including Mental Health Awareness Week. Find out more here.
This positive news article aligns with the UN SDG Good Health and Wellbeing.
