Luis Joaquín García, professor at the University of Jaén and main responsible for the PROCARE initiative, presented the balance of the intervention to members of both institutions, who have been part of the project’s External Advisory Board.
01/12/2021.- Luis Joaquín García, Professor of Psychology at the University of Jaén, presented the results of the PROCARE initiative to members of the FELGTBI+ Youth Group and the Spanish Association for Mutual Help against Social Phobia and Anxiety Disorders (AMTAES), institutions that have been part of the External Advisory Board of this project.
PROCARE is the first selective prevention program aimed at young school children between 12 and 18 years of age at risk of suffering emotional problems in the current stage of psychosocial difficulties marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The data obtained from the intervention carried out in recent months show the beneficial impact of the action carried out by PROCARE experts, led by the University of Jaen (UJA). Specifically, the results indicate the reduction of emotional problems, the improvement of the subjective quality of life and the regulation of emotions in the young participants, who in turn, have shown their satisfaction and acceptability after the implementation of PROCARE.
In the telematic meeting held recently, Luis Joaquín García, as the main responsible of PROCARE, shared the results of this project at national level with Enrique Vargas, president of AMTAES, and Aaron Rodríguez, one of the coordinators of the FELGTBI+ Youth group.
During the meeting, Luis Joaquín García explained “the importance of the work carried out by PROCARE’s team of professionals, which has enabled a significant number of Spanish adolescents and their families to benefit from this emotional vaccine, which strengthens young people emotionally in times of crisis and change”.
For his part, AMTAES president Enrique Vargas said he was “very proud to participate in PROCARE, especially in the field of prevention of mental health problems in young people, being aware that adolescence is a very sensitive period for the development of emotional problems”. He also expressed the commitment of AMTAES to disseminate the results of PROCARE with its agents and partners to contribute to the goal of promoting mental health in youth.
Meanwhile, Aaron Rodriguez, as one of the coordinators of the FELGTBI+ Youth Group, expressed “his concern about the data provided by the PROCARE study on the level of discrimination suffered by LGTBI+ adolescents, as well as his satisfaction with the high number of non-binary gender and LGTBI+ youth participants”. In the same way, he showed “the commitment of FELGTBI+ to maintain its support to initiatives that promote safe spaces for prevention in which young people can share their experiences away from situations that occur in other contexts linked to LGTBIphobia”.
PROCARE’s team of researchers includes professionals from the Psychology Department of the UJA, the Rovira i Virgili University, the Miguel Hernández University of Elche and the University of Miami (USA). In addition to AMTAES and the FELGTBI+ Youth group, other entities such as the Youth Institute (INJUVE) of the Ministry of Social Rights and Agenda 2030, the Confederation of Organizations of Psychopedagogy and Guidance of Spain (COPOE) or the Youth Council of Spain are also part of the External Advisory Board of this project that has contributed to the promotion of mental health and emotional well-being of adolescents nationwide in recent months.
