The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected the mental health of adolescents and young people. In fact, during the II Digital Congress of the Spanish Pediatric Association (AEP) held in June 2021, specialists warned about how this impact is beginning to saturate the consultations, since child psychiatric emergencies, behavior disorders have doubled food -which are increasingly serious-, cases of anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorders, depression and self-harm and suicide attempts in adolescents. Violence against minors, mistreatment and abuse have also increased; and the consumption of screens in children and young people has skyrocketed. In the United States, research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that a quarter of young Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 had Suicide was considered during the period of confinement and, in Austria, similar studies have been carried out which also coincide in indicating a high prevalence of mental disorders one year after the onset of the pandemic. Thus, depressive, anxiety, insomnia and eating disorder symptoms were significantly higher in 2021 than before and at the beginning of COVID-19. And about a third of teens reported suicidal thoughts.

In line with the above, UNICEF warns that, although young people are not the face of the pandemic since, as a general rule, SARS-CoV-2 infection is usually mild and even asymptomatic, they could become the greater victims due to the impact on their mental health because, as many experts explain, for many young people it is very difficult to express their feelings beyond too general descriptions such as anger or sadness.

This is precisely the starting point of this project that seeks to provide young people with tools that allow them to express their emotions through art, thus contributing to their emotional education. In this sense, we understand emotional education as an educational process, continuous and permanent, which aims to promote the development of emotional competencies as an essential element of human development, in order to enable them for life and in order to increase the personal and social well-being. Within the framework of youth policies, emotional education implies self-awareness, the management of internal processes before they become external, and the formation of social skills, autonomy and the ability to generate well-being in one himself and the environment. It is about applying this knowledge to make decisions in life and promote the transition to adulthood.

With this approach, the main objective is “to promote the emotional expression of young people as a method to improve their mental health”. Along with this, there are other objectives among which the following stand out:
– promote the inclusion of young Europeans, regardless of their diverse realities,
– promote European values,
– promote active youth participation