When COVID hit, our team released college-specific versions of Sharpen Minds to support college student resilience by improving the shared protective factors for suicide, mental disorders and trauma. We incorporated the feedback from the students, focusing on the most popular / engaging modules into the Sharpen Mental Health Literacy course - which is now being deployed to college students, medical students and parents.
A few study highlights are below:
Five universities (n=1386) and one medical school (n=281) in the Appalachian region in the United States participated in the study. We provided peer-focused documentary film psychoeducational modules on the topics of mental health literacy, social-emotional learning, mindfulness-based stress reduction, and suicide prevention.
100% of universities that were recruited participated in the study with five out of six implementation criteria included, indicating high implementation. All of universities continued using the Sharpen app following the end of data collection, resulting in 100% maintenance. The medical school expanded the program from one to all four of its campuses.
Berreta, K., Nguyen, C., Stoner, A. M., Ridgeway, L, Wilson, A., Fadel, N. & Biber, D. D. (in review). A RE-AIM analysis of a mental health app for undergraduate and medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic: A case report. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (in review, April 2023).