The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has had a highly relevant impact on the mental health of the entire population, including that of adolescents, who now have an app that allows them to better manage their emotions and improve their mental well-being.
One of the first available studies on the emotional effect of quarantine on minors in Spain and Italy, conducted by the Miguel Hernández University of Alicante, shows that 85.7% of parents have observed changes in their children’s emotional state and behavior, especially problems with concentration, disinterest, irritability, excitement, nervousness, feelings of loneliness, restlessness and worry.
To prevent these situations in young people between 16 and 22 years old, a European research team, in which the Laboratory of Psychology and Technology of the Jaume I University of Castellón participates, has developed the MyMoodCoach app. An application that provides a range of assessment and treatment strategies that help young people improve their understanding of emotions and emotional skills.
Via MyMoodCoach, young people have the ability to monitor and learn about their emotional reactions in their daily life. For this, the application has a series of tools based on the so-called Momentary Ecological Assessment (EMA), It is the evaluation of the behavior or of the daily affective states as they occur, which allows the application to offer personalized strategies based on the responses of the users.
An app for mental wellness
These tools include: the Emotional monitor which helps to record the emotional state on a daily basis or a Emotion Explorer describing how the user feels, where he is, who he is with, what he is doing or thinking, with quick one-minute menus. By capturing emotions through these mechanisms, the user learns about the conditions that affect his state of mind in order to understand how to deal with them.
These strategies aim to improve emotional predisposition, that is, the skills to understand and manage emotions in order to improve aspects such as mental well-being, social relationships or academic and job satisfaction.. In addition, the app applies intervention strategies based on each user’s profile through the evaluation of various aspects such as emotional competence or levels of psychological distress, present in the initial evaluation, and also allows periodic evaluations to analyze their effectiveness.
To achieve these goals, the research team will conduct two empirical studies targeting adolescents and young adults aged 16-22 years. The first, called PROMOTE Trial, evaluates the effectiveness of the application to improve the health and psychological well-being of young people. And the second, PREVENT Trial, will analyze the effectiveness of the application to reduce the incidence of depression in young people at risk for psychopathology and lack of emotional competence.