The “Universal Preventive Resilience Intervention Globally implemented in schools to improve and promote mental Health for Teenagers”, UPRIGHT project funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme is aimed at adolescents from 12 to 14 years of age.

This age-group is exposed to multiple factors that may lead to the development of mental health disorders and risky behaviour.

UPRIGHT is a holistic intervention involving education centres, teachers, teenagers and their families. Education centres provide a unique space for the implementation of universal mental health and well-being programmes and teachers play an essential role in helping their students to explore them. On the other hand, families are a reference point for teenagers providing them with support and safety.

The UPRIGHT programme offers training for the development of skills and strategies to help teenagers to better understand themselves and promote healthy methods in their daily routine performance. This is expected to release the teenagers’ full potential and achieve the best mental and physical health during their transition to adult age.

Once the UPRIGHT programme joint creation and validation phase are completed, intervention in the 5 European regions participating in the pilot programme, including the Basque Country, alongside Trento (Italy), Lower Silesia (Poland), Reykjavik (Iceland) and Denmark, has kicked off. Six education centres based in Gasteiz participate in the Basque Country and the UPRIGHT intervention is implemented in three of them while the others will be control centres.

Training at schools and education centres started in October. Teaching staff are being trained on resilience skills and mental health knowledge. Likewise, the engagement of families to launch on-line training is also being promoted. Teaching staff are expected to be ready to teach the UPRIGHT programme to students of Year 1 of ESO (Spanish secondary school) from January 2019 until the end of the academic year.

For further information about the project, visit the official website: www.uprightproject.eu