Speaker
Presentation in Spanish
MARÍA BALLE
UNIVERSITY OF THE BALEARIC ISLANDS. SPAIN
She holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). She is a professor in the area of Personality, Psychological Assessment, and Treatment and director of the Master’s Degree in General Health Psychology at the UIB. She is a member of the Cognitive-Affective Neuroscience and Clinical Psychology research group (UIB) and a researcher at the Balearic Islands Health Research Institute (IDISBA).
Her career combines more than 20 years of research and teaching experience with a focus on Developmental Psychopathology, particularly the study of temperament and emotional regulation in the development and prevention of anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. This line of work has led to numerous publications in international journals with high impact factors and active participation in national and international scientific conferences. She is currently co-directing a research project on the creation of a digital repository for promoting children’s mental health and is participating in another project funded by the Mutua Madrileña Foundation focused on suicide prevention in adolescents. In the teaching field, she teaches courses in the Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and the Master’s Degree in General Health Psychology at the UIB and has been a consultant at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya on Child Psychopathology and Clinical Assessment and Intervention in Adults.
Childhood, Mental Health, and Technology
Mental health problems continue to grow worldwide, with an incalculable individual and social impact. The WHO recommends prioritizing the promotion of mental health and the prevention of mental disorders. This symposium is part of this line of work, with a specific focus on childhood, the stage in which many of these problems originate.
One of the main obstacles to this task is the scarcity of normative data on children’s psychological development, as well as the lack of open and shared systems that allow for the accumulation of knowledge and foster research. Given the high prevalence of emotional and behavioral difficulties during middle childhood, the first communication will present a proposal for an open digital repository of psychological data on children between 6 and 12 years of age. To this end, a mobile application for data collection aimed at families has been developed, with all ethical, legal, and technological safeguards, in addition to a web portal that facilitates family participation and offers resources on promotion, prevention, and early detection. The second communication will address the general psychopathology factor (p factor), a dimensional construct that explains the risk, comorbidity, and severity of mental disorders, and will analyze its relationship with temperament, stressful life events, and emotional regulation. The third communication will delve into the use of technological methodologies to assess emotional regulation, such as ecological momentary assessment (EMA), which allows recording emotional functioning in real time and in natural environments. Finally, the fourth communication will evaluate the validity of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) as a measure of the p factor in children, examining its usefulness as a screening tool in community settings.
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