Henka, a state program for the prevention and promotion of emotional well-being in adolescence
Sant Joan de Déu and Zurich Spain , through the Z Zurich Foundation , have launched the Henka program: Growing in Emotional Well-being , an inclusive and universal project aimed at the entire educational community, with a focus on adolescents. This initiative will concentrate its efforts on the prevention and promotion of emotional well-being in young people between the ages of 12 and 16. The activities planned for this program will reach Catalonia, the Community of Madrid, and other areas of Spain. It will last for more than three years.
In Catalonia, the program has the support of the Ministries of Education and Health and is aligned with the strategies of the Master Plan for Mental Health and Addictions to promote and prevent mental health in the child and youth population.
The goal of Henka , a Japanese word meaning "transformation," is to help young people cope with adversity in a healthy way, using tools that promote the development of resilience as a protective factor . This reduces both the risk of developing a mental health disorder and the negative impact of many problems that negatively affect the well-being of adolescents.
The importance of promoting resilience in adolescent students
The program aims to take a holistic approach to secondary schools, starting with 12-year-olds, as this is considered a developmental period characterized by significant neuroplasticity and a high capacity for learning, a key factor in prevention efforts. Their families, teachers, and other socializing agents will receive training from specialists at San Juan de Dios in promoting and developing resilience skills, enabling them to implement the program independently within the educational setting.
Once the activities for acquiring these skills (socio-emotional learning workshops, learning coping strategies, etc.) have been implemented, adolescents and their caregivers will be empowered to value their experience and, based on it and in their particular context, the tools and recommendations will be provided to develop an action plan that allows the learning to be incorporated into the culture of the centers, so that emotional well-being becomes one of the main axes of their educational project.
16% of young people with mental health disorders
In 2021, 15.9% of young people reported experiencing some form of mental health disorder , a figure that has increased significantly in four years, since in 2017 it represented 6.25% of this group, according to figures from the Youth Barometer on Health and Wellbeing. Data from the 2017 National Health Survey already showed that the percentage of the population between 4 and 14 years old at risk of poor mental health was 13.2%, with the autonomous communities of Andalusia, Castile and León, and Catalonia having the highest percentages, at 15%.
The likelihood of experiencing a mental health problem in this population has shown an increasing trend in recent years and has been accentuated by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the context of mental health, the problems that impact the emotional well-being of adolescents are of different types. On the one hand, there are mental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorders, psychotic disorders, ADHD, or eating disorders, a large proportion of which (75%) begin in childhood and early adolescence.
Psychological distress , for its part, is distributed across a wide range of severity, and not all of it is a mental disorder. In fact, much of the current increase in demand for assistance and support stems from distress associated with emerging problems that negatively impact adolescents' mental health. These include, among others, excessive screen time, bullying and abusive interpersonal relationships, child-to-parent violence, and the generalization within the general population of behaviors previously confined to the clinical setting, such as non-suicidal self-harm.
Resilience as a construct
Child and youth development specialists have identified resilience as a construct, with scientific validity, that encompasses a whole series of personal tools (socio-emotional and cognitive capacities) that determine the level of personal vulnerability to difficulties and life events that generate imbalance and discomfort.
Currently, all international programs aimed at promoting mental health in children and young people are based on the concept of resilience, as a central axis, to improve social relationships, academic performance, participation and social integration, etc.
In short, greater resilience is related to less psychological vulnerability and, therefore, to a healthier attitude and a more balanced perspective.
Impact on society and citizenship
To ensure the initiative brings about a transformation in how emotional distress and mental health problems are addressed among adolescents and young adults, the project will include community-wide forums for reflection, debate, and knowledge sharing . These forums will involve representatives from public administration, specialists in child and adolescent development and mental health, pedagogy and emotional education, young people, social workers, and the general public. The forums will be held biennially , with the first taking place in Barcelona in 2024 and the second in Madrid in 2026.
With this same objective, awareness campaigns will be carried out based on the documentary series #YoCambioTodo , and the SOM Mental Health 360 platform will be promoted, a project that was launched three years ago and is already a benchmark in mental health in Spain and Latin America, with more than 40,000 monthly visits.
An inclusive and universal project
The project is inclusive and universal , targeting the entire educational community and placing adolescents at its center. It excludes no young person, promoting the development of general socio-emotional skills that improve the coping abilities of all adolescents, regardless of their current mental health status. The family is important because it is the environment in which the child develops, as is the educational community. The program has been co-created with teachers and other education professionals and pays special attention to schools in vulnerable areas, where it will be implemented with additional resources.
Henka 's team began with a systematic, thorough, and critical review of resilience-building programs that have already been successfully implemented and validated in other countries. In this way, they selected components from those programs that have demonstrated the greatest effectiveness and applicability within our cultural context.
The training and follow-up/transfer program includes interventions such as workshops or group dynamics, to be carried out in classrooms and with families, but it also plans to go out into recreational and social contexts in general, through the incorporation of resources for integration, awareness and social impact.
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