Youth-GEMs

The Youth-GEMs project is a groundbreaking research initiative aimed at significantly reducing mental suffering and illness among European youth in the next 5-10 years. By identifying actionable markers for mental health trajectories in young people, the project seeks to address the pressing issue of youth mental health and its impact on citizens and societies.

While the importance of young generations’ mental health has gained recognition, there remains a scarcity of scientific evidence regarding the role of genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors in causing or preventing mental health problems in this demographic.

To tackle this challenge, the Youth-GEMs project adopts a trans-syndromal approach and examines the topic from various perspectives through its multidisciplinary consortium. This collaborative effort aims to pave the way for crucial breakthroughs in the field.

Ab.Acus contributes to the project by leading the development of the project’s digital infrastructure, delivering two complementary youth- and clinician-empowering digital tools that together address both the clinical and personal dimensions of youth mental health monitoring.

The first is an integrated system consisting of a mobile application and AI-powered clinical dashboard, developed in collaboration with the University of Barcelona, which is responsible for the underlying AI model. The mobile application collects data on lifestyle factors, behavioural signals and mental wellbeing indicators, feeding a clinical dashboard that supports early detection and prediction of mental ill-health trajectories in young people. Throughout development, multi-stakeholder requirements have been gathered through co-creation sessions grounded in human-centred design methodology, ensuring the system is clinically robust, inclusive and responsive to the real needs of both young users and healthcare professionals.

The second is Gemmy, a standalone wellbeing app developed within Youth-GEMs and available on the App Store, designed to put mental health support directly in the hands of adolescents and young adults. Gemmy offers emotion tracking, goal setting, grounding activities and positive affirmations — all built on research-backed techniques developed in close collaboration with psychology researchers and experts. What makes Gemmy distinctive is its deep co-creation process: young people were actively involved from the earliest stages of development, ensuring the app genuinely reflects their needs, language and expectations rather than being designed for them from the outside.

Together, these two tools represent Ab.Acus’s commitment to building digital health solutions that work at every level — from clinical prediction and early intervention to everyday self-management and personal growth.

By combining expertise and innovation, the Youth-GEMs project aims to make a significant impact on the mental well-being of European youth and lay the foundation for improved mental health interventions and support systems.