24Meeting between research groups, Catalina García and the Rector of the UJA, Juan Gómez, to present projects that address the state of health and emotional well-being in adolescents.
24/10/2022.- The research teams of the DAREMOS and PROCARE projects have presented the results of these two initiatives to promote health and emotional well-being in adolescents to the Regional Minister of Health and Consumption of the Andalusian Government, Catalina García, during her institutional visit to the University of Jaén (UJA).
The researchers of the Department of Psychology of the UJA Luis Joaquín García, Lourdes Espinosa and José Antonio Muela, the researcher of the Department of English Philology of the UJA, Mª Belén Díez, and the researcher of the Institute of Biomedical Research of Málaga (IBIMA), Mª Jesús Pinto held a working meeting with Catalina García, the Rector of the UJA, Juan Gómez, the Vice-Rector of Research of the UJA, Gustavo Reyes, the Secretary General of Humanization, Planning, Social and Health Care and Consumption of the Junta, Mª Luisa del Moral, and the territorial delegate of Health and Consumption in Jaén, Elena González.
At this meeting, the results of the DAREMOS Project were presented, a pioneering worldwide interdisciplinary initiative focused on the early identification of adolescents at high risk of developing emotional problems through the contributions of epigenetics and language analysis. Luis Joaquín García, Lourdes Espinosa, José Antonio Muela and Mª Belén Díez from the University of Jaén, and Mª Jesús Pinto and Juan Miguel Gómez from IBIMA, together with Arturo Montejo from the UJA spin-off YottaCode, have participated in this initiative.
They also presented the results of the PROCARE initiative, the first transdiagnostic initiative of selective prevention at international level that has demonstrated its effectiveness in the intervention of adolescents at risk (PROCARE+) and at high risk (PROCARE-I) of developing emotional problems such as anxiety or depression. The PROCARE project team is formed by Luis Joaquín García José Antonio Muela, Lourdes Espinosa and Mª del Mar Díaz, from the Department of Psychology of the UJA, Josefa Canals, from the Rovira i Virgili University, José Antonio Piqueras, from the Miguel Hernández University of Elche, and Jill Ehrenreich-May, from the University of Miami (USA).
In turn, institutions and entities such as the Instituto de la Juventud (INJUVE) of the Ministry of Social Rights and Agenda 2030, the Asociación Española de Ayuda Mutua contra Fobia Social y Trastornos de Ansiedad (AMTAES), the Confederación de Organizaciones de Psicopedagogía y Orientación de España (COPOE), the Consejo de la Juventud de España (CJE) or the Youth group of the Federación Estatal de Lesbianas, Gais, Trans, Bisexuales, Intersexuales y más (FELGTBI+) are part of the External Advisory Board of both projects.
In the attention to the media, the Rector of the UJA highlighted “the interest of the Regional Ministry for a problem such as psychological disorders, especially in the adolescent population”. In this sense, he emphasized that at UJA “we have several research groups that address this problem from different approaches and with relevant scientific results”.
For her part, the Councilor for Health and Consumer Affairs of the Andalusian Regional Government showed her “concern for the suicide data in the adolescent stage, which has worsened in recent years”, and stressed that the Regional Ministry “is providing the means to help all those who need it and their families and to curb these data”. In this regard, he expressed his commitment to open avenues of collaboration to implement DAREMOS and PROCARE for young Andalusians.
Finally, Luis Joaquín García highlighted the data from DAREMOS and PROCARE, “whose implementation has contributed to improving the mental health and emotional wellbeing of more than 1,500 adolescents from all over the country and their families”. He also advocated the importance of investment in research, prevention and intervention in this field by the institutions.
In addition to the heads of DAREMOS and PROCARE, the UJA research group ‘Sistemas Inteligentes de Acceso a la Información (SINAI)’ also presented to the Councilor the BIG HUG Project, which arises from the DAREMOS initiative and which includes Luis Joaquín García and Mª Belén Díez among its heads. Its main objective is the construction of automatic risk determination systems for the young population in social networks using artificial intelligence, and another related to the field of biomedicine, which allows the management of medical records, the integration of external knowledge and the automatic coding of medical protocols.
The DAREMOS project (1260378) has been co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Ministry of Economy and Knowledge of the Andalusian Regional Government; while the PROCARE project (PID 2019-111138RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) has been funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation.
