Noemí Guillamón

Noemí Guillamón Cano is Professor of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia (Spain), where she coordinates courses in the area of Clinical and Health Psychology of the Degree of Psychology and Master's degree in General Health Psychology (UOC-UdG). She is a researcher at PsiNET (Psychology, Health and Net) research group, and is interested in the study of health promotion and improving the quality of life of people through information and communications technology (ICT). Her research interests focus on health promotion in adolescents through ICT. She combines her teaching and research with her work as a child and adolescent psychologist in a private clinic.

This symposium emphasizes the potential of the internet and social networks to improve health and quality of life of children and adolescents. In this sense, its ultimate purpose is to highlight the benefits that the good use of ICT may have on the health of young, understood in its broadest sense. Four communications that address how ICT can help in the psychological intervention in children and adolescents will be presented.The first two communications describe initiatives focused on the promotion of mental health in adolescents: The first describes the project 'Adolescentes en red' (In English: 'Teenagers network'), which was carried out in collaboration with secondary schools in Catalonia and focuses on the analysis of how adolescent would like that online health resources for them are. The second communication addresses the need of information and counseling on mental health and sexology issues in adolescents, and how the team of psychologists and sexologists of manage them at the online office portal for adolescents: www.adolescents.cat. The latest communications present two initiatives focused on interventions through the network for two key problems: anxiety in adolescents and recurrent abdominal pain in children. The third communication will present an online psychoeducational program aimed at teenagers with high anxiety sensitivity. The aim is to provide tools for teens to control non-pathological anxiety and counseling from an expert professional. The fourth communication presents DARWEB program, an online intervention for children with recurrent abdominal pain and their parents in order to provide a tool to help families cope with the problem, so that pain does not interfere at the long term.