2/03/2023.- The University of Jaén (UJA) promotes the project ‘Promoting the health and emotional well-being of adolescents in the educational, health and social sectors’ (PROADEMO), which aims to develop a methodology to promote the participation of adolescents and social agents in the development of national and European policies in the field of mental health.
In this way, PROADEMO intends to design and develop a digital training package, aimed at school personnel, youth and health workers, that will allow them to improve their skills and knowledge to establish and provide mental health services to adolescents at risk of developing emotional problems as a consequence of the pandemic.
Along the same lines, this initiative will develop a set of practical tools for health, education and youth professionals to provide a high quality mental health service; as well as an emotional support toolkit for young people, especially focused on adolescents and produced in collaboration with them, in order to provide them with strategies to promote resilience, protect their emotional health and well-being, and increase their emotional literacy through a friendly and approachable language.
“The target population will be, on the one hand, adolescents between 12 and 18 years old, and on the other hand, the staff of schools, health centers and youth professionals, who will have resources to provide support to adolescents,” says Luis Joaquín García, Professor of Psychology at UJA and main responsible for the project. Together with him, the professors of the Department of Psychology of the UJA, Lourdes Espinosa and José Antonio Muela, are also part of the research team of this initiative.
PROADEMO is a project 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. It also 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 Federación Estatal de Lesbianas, Gais, Trans, Bisexuales, Intersexuales y más (FELGTBI+) and the Asociación asturiana para la atención y el cuidado de la infancia (ASACI).
World Adolescent Mental Well-being Day
Since 2020, every March 2, the World Day for Adolescent Mental Wellbeing has been commemorated, the purpose of which is to raise awareness of the mental health problems faced by adolescents, as well as to destigmatize this type of disorders and offer them support.
On this commemorative day, Luis Joaquín García emphasized that “a society has no future without emotionally healthy adolescents. Now more than ever there is a need for urgent investment in promoting the health and emotional wellbeing of young people”.
In this sense, the professor of the University of Jaén praised the work of promoting the health and emotional well-being of young people, as well as the prevention of emotional problems that is being carried out from the UJA, in collaboration with other universities, institutions and groups through the implementation of various projects. “Two examples, apart from PROADEMO, which has just started, are the DAREMOS and PROCARE initiatives, pioneers at international level, which have improved the emotional wellbeing of around 2,000 adolescents at risk of suffering emotional problems throughout Spain, within the framework of selective and indicated prevention based on evidence,” he said.
