SMILE
from 01/05/2023 until 31/10/2026
SMILE, originally "Supporting Mental Health in Young People: Integrated Methodology for cLinical dEcisions and evidence-based interventions“, is a project aimed at bolstering the mental health of young individuals in a rapidly changing society. It addresses challenges such as anxiety, depression, and societal stigmatisation. The initiative is creating an Open Knowledge Platform (OKP) with digital tools for children, adolescents, and young adults aged 10 to 24. These tools offer a gamified environment centred on mental health, incorporating self-assessments and game scenarios. They also promote resilience, cognitive flexibility, and social competence. The platform educates parents, teachers, and professionals about mental stress in the youth and is accessible in EU countries in their respective languages. To build this, technology companies, universities, and social institutions collaborate, harnessing artificial intelligence and chatbots.
Aim
General Objectives
- Bring together evidence-based knowledge and provide information to assist stakeholders (mental health providers, policymakers, researchers) in the process of evaluating the early detection benefits of mental distress and resilience building in our changing world.
- To build a sustainable resilience framework, based on real-world data and in close collaboration with experts (clinicians, psychologists, social workers), citizens and policy makers, to improve mental health preparedness against existing and future digital, societal and environmental stressors.
- Increase awareness about psychological distress in adolescents‘ long-term engagement, social cohesion, and trust in SMILE tools and services while considering ethical and social practices.
- Enhance strategic networking with relevant European funded projects and international organisations and ensure the wide dissemination of SMILE results.
Scientific and Technological Objectives
- Create a new digital solution for unobtrusive self-monitoring and pre-screening, based on cues expressed spontaneously during conversation/engagement.
- Deliver disruptive approaches to better understand, assess and monitor the association between mental health and the rapidly changing digital world while allowing adolescents to learn new skills and ways to interpret the changing world.
- Develop a collaborative multiplayer gamification to facilitate self-assessment, accelerate self-learning of new skills and strengthen monitoring during interventions. SMILE will provide gamified digital interventions to use cognitive restructuring to challenge negative assumptions and biased thinking.
- Innovate local communities by delivering collaborative tools and an OKP to bring together potential stakeholders through Living Labs and provide consistent and authoritative information about anxiety responses.
- Integrate data from several real-world sources and provide data harmonisation and protection services for an accurate and personalised decision-making process.
- To research and develop a trustworthy, explainable, ethical, and unbiased Artificial Intelligence for analysis of mental problems, risks, and interventions.
Business Objective
- Define tailored business models based on data-driven and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) to support the replication and large adoption of SMILE tools while ensuring affordable and quality mental health organisations for young people, reducing the burden of mental ill health
About funding
Funding bodies: European Commission
Created Nov. 28, 2024, 9:57 a.m.
Updated Dec. 10, 2024, 4:28 p.m.
