Technology opportunities to promote Latinx youth mental health in an Emerging Latinx Community

10:30am-12pm

Primary Facilitator: Patricia I. Documet, MD, DrPH

Session Type: Workshop

Topic: Psychological and Emotional Well-Being and Supports

Description

Latinx youth face multiple stressors that put them at risk for anxiety and depression. In communities like Allegheny County, with small yet growing Latinx populations, they also face social isolation. This session will present a technology-based remote project to promote emotional wellbeing among youth through mindfulness. We will show the acceptance and feasibility of this program as well as future steps to involve youth in modifying the project.

We will present Cuenta Conmigo, a remote mindfulness intervention to provide youth with stress coping and emotion regulation techniques among healthy Latinx youth.

Panelists

Patricia I. Documet, MD, DrPH

Associate Professor of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences
Latinx Research and Outreach Director of the Center for Heath Equity
Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh
pdocumet@pitt.edu

Dr. Documet has 23 years of experience working with Latinx, including evaluation, mixed methods, and participatory studies with community health workers. She is extensively involved with the local Latino community, serving currently as Board President for Casa San Jose, a welcome center for Latinx. Dr. Escobar-Viera’s background is in psychiatry and health services research. He focuses on leveraging social media to prevent negative mental health outcomes among sexual and gender minority (SGM) persons and social isolation among SGM youth. Ms. Melendez-Ardiles specializes in pediatric counseling and has 25 years of experience in serving Latinx youth in the Pittsburgh area. Dr. Ruiz is an anthropologist who uses the combined strengths of participatory action research, anthropology, public health, and the arts to better understand inequalities in urban communities, especially new growth communities in the US Midwest. For this project, the team drew from their respective strengths to create and implement Cuenta Conmigo.

Cesar Escobar Viera, PhD, MD
Assistant Professor and Director of the Program for Internet Delivered Interventions on LGBTQA+ Mental Health
Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh

Claudia Melendez-Ardiles, M.S.Ed., LPC
Behavioral therapist, Children’s Community Pediatrics
Mental Health Therapist, Private Practice

Héctor Camilo Ruiz Sánchez, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Liberal Arts Action Lab
Trinity College