Project

We want to promote mental health, and to do so we need to focus on childhood, when disorders have not yet begun or become chronic. But mental health research with children poses important challenges. The most significant is the lack of data on “normal” behaviour, which would make it easier to tell what is not.

Paediatricians, for example, have population and longitudinal data on weight and height, which makes it easier to detect problems when a child does not match what is expected for their age. Mental health professionals do not have this kind of data.

That is why we want to create a digital repository of psychological information on the entire population aged 6 to 12 in the Balearic Islands. The data comes from families, through a secure digital platform that complies with all personal data protection rules.

No one except the members of the research team can access the children's data. Since the aim is to support mental health research, the data is shared on an open data portal after being anonymised: this means that it is impossible, even for us, to know whom it belongs to.

Anonymisation follows the recommendations of the Spanish Data Protection Agency. As participants, families have access to evidence-based information on children's psychological problems, training activities and reports on the project's data.