The European Congress of Multifamily Therapy is a highly significant event in the field of adolescent mental health, bringing together professionals from psychology, psychiatry, social work, education, and family support, as well as researchers and public policy makers.
Held on September 5, 2025, the congress gathers numerous participants from different countries and contexts, serving as a key meeting point for the dissemination of innovative approaches in multifamily intervention and school-based prevention.
According to the organizers, the event has brought together more than 1,500 specialized professionals, underscoring its importance as a multidisciplinary forum for the exchange of experiences, evidence, and practices among professionals and communities.
The invitation extended to YumaKids to present its preventive mental health work in Colombia was made through the Erasmus+ project in collaboration with Kidstime Deutschland. This gesture reinforces both the international dimension and the methodological rigor of the event.
Within this framework, Miguel Cárdenas, psychiatrist, and Johanna Caicedo, psychologist, presented the experience of the YumaKids workshops, which integrate work with adolescents, their caregivers, and a multifamily meeting. They highlighted the importance of incorporating local cultural knowledge and involving the elders of each community as guardians of collective wisdom.
This approach has been implemented in nearly 22 secondary schools in Tolima, Colombia, benefiting more than 1,700 adolescents and their families. It has become a consolidated prevention strategy that combines classroom activities with multifamily sessions to strengthen family support networks in the face of challenging situations.
The YumaKids program emphasizes #preventionintheclassroom as a way to promote knowledge, #emotionaldialogue, and #conflictmanagement, while fostering trust-based relationships and encouraging help-seeking behaviors. In parallel, the multifamily sessions strengthen the family as a support network, recognizing the importance of cultural practices and the participation of rural and Indigenous communities in Tolima—contexts marked by psychosocial vulnerability, armed conflict, and displacement.
This work has been developed within an intervention framework that values cultural diversity and community participation as key tools for fostering youth resilience.
As for the setting, the congress took place at Hotel Luisenhof / Pescheks Tagungshotel, Worthstraße 10, 27374 Visselhövede (Lower Saxony), a strategic venue for high-level professional meetings and international collaboration.
Among the associated organizations, it is worth highlighting Kidstime Deutschland and the Erasmus+ Program. The relevance of this event lies in its cross-cutting nature and its ability to bring together specialists who work with families and adolescents through multifamily approaches, allowing YumaKids to share successful practices and establish partnerships that strengthen the sustainability of interventions in multicultural contexts.
If you would like to learn more about this approach or collaborate, get in touch with YumaKids.
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