Assessing and Enhancing Emotional Competence for Well-Being (ECoWeB) in the Young: A principled, evidence-based, mobile-health approach to prevent mental disorders and promote mental well-being

Vyhodnocování a zlepšování emoční kompetence pro duševní pohodu mladých: objektivní přístup využívající mobilní technologie s cílem prevence duševních poruch a podpory duševní pohody

grant

Mental health, wellbeing, primary prevention

Although there are effective mental well-being promotion and mental disorder
prevention interventions for young people, there is a need for more robust
evidence on resilience factors, for more effective interventions, and for
approaches that can be scalable and accessible at a population level. To tackle
these challenges and move beyond the state-of-the-art, ECoWeB uniquely integrates
three multidisciplinary approaches: (a) For the first time to our knowledge, we
will systematically use an established theoretical model of normal emotional
functioning (Emotional Competence Process) to guide the identification and
targeting of mechanisms robustly implicated in well-being and psychopathology in
young people; (b) A personalized medicine approach: systematic assessment of
personal Emotional Competence (EC) profiles is used to select targeted
interventions to promote well-being: (c) Mobile application delivery to target
scalability, accessibility and acceptability in young people. Our aim is to
improve mental health promotion by developing, evaluating, and disseminating
a comprehensive mobile app to assess deficits in three major components of EC
(production, regulation, knowledge) and to selectively augment pertinent EC
abilities in adolescents and young adults. It is hypothesized that the targeted
interventions, based on state-of-the-art assessment, will efficiently increase
resilience toward adversity, promote mental well-being, and act as primary
prevention for mental disorders. The EC intervention will be tested in cohort
multiple randomized trials with young people from many European countries against
a usual care control and an established, non-personalized socio-emotional
learning digital intervention. Building directly from a fundamental understanding
of emotion in combination with a personalized approach and leading edge digital
technology is a novel and innovative approach, with potential to deliver
a breakthrough in effective prevention of mental disorder.

Smrž Pavel, doc. RNDr., Ph.D. (DCGM) – research leader
Zemčík Pavel, prof. Dr. Ing., dr. h. c. (DCGM)