ERYICA, in collaboration with the Council of Europe, organized this webinar aimed primarily at young people, youth workers, as well as health and education professionals.
1/12/2022.- Luis Joaquín García, Professor of Psychology at the University of Jaén (UJA), presented the PROADEMO initiative to promote emotional well-being in adolescents at the webinar “Do you kNOw distress? – Youth information responses to mental health”, organized by the European Youth Information and Counselling Agency (ERYICA), in collaboration with the Council of Europe.
The event, aimed at young people, youth workers, as well as education and health professionals and the general public, provided information on the impact of the pandemic on the health and emotional well-being of young people through the vision of specialists in child and youth mental health and other disciplines; and allowed to hear and value the point of view of young people on this issue.
Luis Joaquín García gave the opening lecture of the webinar, analyzing the mental health needs of young people and delving into successful actions carried out to improve this situation. In his presentation, he broke down the keys of the initiatives to promote emotional well-being in adolescents and young people that UJA has led in recent years: PROADEMO, PROCARE, DAREMOS and DIGITAS, and national projects such as BIG HUG and international projects such as Level UP, in which his team participates.
Luis Joaquín García emphasized the objectives of these six projects and the results obtained in some of them. In this regard, about PROADEMO he highlighted “the idea of developing a complete methodology that promotes the participation of adolescents and social agents in the development of guidelines for national and European policies, and the drafting of documents in a child-friendly language”.
In turn, he outlined the most important objectives of this innovative project: to design and develop a comprehensive digital training package for school staff, youth and health care workers to improve their skills and knowledge to establish and deliver mental health services to adolescents at risk of developing emotional problems in the aftermath of the pandemic; develop a practical toolkit for health, education and youth professionals to deliver a high quality mental health service; and develop an emotional support toolkit for young people, specifically focused on adolescents and produced in collaboration with them, to provide them with information and strategies to promote resilience and protect their emotional health and well-being, as well as to increase emotional literacy.
PROEADEMO is a project (PDC2022-133401-I00) funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the State Research Agency and the European Union through the “Next Generation EU” funds within the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
PROADEMO has an External Advisory Board formed by the Spanish Youth Institute (INJUVE) of the Ministry of Social Rights and Agenda 2030, the Spanish Association for Mutual Help against Social Phobia and Anxiety Disorders (AMTAES), the Confederación de Organizaciones de Psicopedagogía y Orientación de España (COPOE), the Consejo de la Juventud de España (CJE) and the Youth group of the Federación Estatal de Lesbianas, Gais, Trans, Bisexuales, Intersexuales y más (FELGTBI+).
The day also included a presentation by Eva Reina, Director of ERYICA; an interview by Maria Fsadni, member of ERYICA’s Youth Ambassadors Commission, with Anna Knobbout, member of the Advisory Council on Youth; and presentations by Anna Nesladek and Angelina Pereira, ERYICA technical staff. Also, examples of good practices in youth information services and other related sectors were presented through the testimonies of: Chara Spyropoulou (IASIS NGO, Greece), Patricia Venâncio (ANIJ, Luxembourg) and Silvia Solà and Mariona Altimira (Castellterçol City Council, Spain).
