STOP Project reaches Latin America with the support of TikTok

The STOP Project, an initiative created by Ana Freire, Vice Dean for Social Impact and Academic Innovation at the UPF Barcelona School of Management (UPF-BSM), has received $100,000 in funding from TikTok. This support will be used to scale the project internationally—to Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Panama—in collaboration with local foundations and governments experienced in providing free emotional support.

Created in 2017, the STOP Project uses artificial intelligence to identify patterns associated with mental health issues in social media use by analyzing posts, images, and user behavior in a completely anonymized way. “We use advances in AI to study the demographic and behavioral patterns common among users showing signs of suicidal ideation, depression, or eating disorders, and then share helpline numbers or chat services with users who match those profiles. Without these campaigns, many people wouldn’t know that such resources exist,” explains Freire.

The first campaign, launched in December 2020, led to a 60% increase in calls from social media to Barcelona’s Suicide Prevention Helpline. Since then, a total of four campaigns have been conducted in Spain. In June 2022, the helpline also introduced a chat service (as many young people preferred it to phone calls), and STOP’s campaigns helped increase chat conversations by up to 1,000%, with most messages coming from women (70%), and nearly half (40%) of them underage, from all over Spain.

AI as an ally in addressing mental health challenges

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in healthcare and in mental health prevention as well. “Today, AI is already being used by mental health professionals, for example, to monitor patients at home or during their daily lives. In cases such as bipolar disorder, there are wearable devices—like wristbands or smartwatches—that allow professionals to monitor and predict when someone is entering a manic or depressive phase,” Freire explains.

Chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini are also starting to play a relevant role, providing emotional support to users who express themselves through these systems. “We’ve seen many cases where people struggling with mental health issues seek relief on these platforms—and that’s understandable, because current mental health care systems are often insufficient,” notes the expert.

In such cases, chatbots redirect users to emergency or helpline services, which has notably changed the profile of callers to 024, Spain’s national suicide prevention number. “The average caller age shifted from 45–49 years old to 15–19 years old, because young people chat with AI platforms, and these systems recommend that they call national helplines,” Freire explains.

According to the researcher, AI has the potential to be a strong ally to public health systems and even to reach where humans cannot; “What if generative AI could complement an inefficient public mental health system? Of course, it must always be developed alongside multidisciplinary teams of psychologists and psychiatrists,” she emphasizes.

In Spain, there are only six psychologists per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to the European average of 18, and waiting lists are long. “Meanwhile, generative AI systems are free, available 24/7, and can simulate human empathy quite convincingly,” Freire says. “But I insist—it must be well-designed AI, developed hand in hand with mental health professionals to handle such sensitive cases,” concludes the Vice Dean of UPF-BSM.