Sharpen Peer Resiliency: Empowering Youth Through Connection

In an era where mental health challenges among young people have reached crisis levels, peer resiliency programs offer a way to harness the natural power of peer relationships to build protective factors, reduce stigma, and authentically strengthen resilience for both participants.

What Is Peer Resiliency?

Peer resiliency programs pair mentors of similar ages or slightly older with younger participants to develop leadership and life skills. Research demonstrates that when high school students are matched with middle school or elementary school students, these relationships have immense benefits to both mentors and mentees, building leadership characteristics, self-confidence, self-worth and social skills (Williams et al, 2024; Haft et al, 2019; Clarke-Midura et al, 2018).

When trained peer mentors connect with mentees, safe spaces are created for meaningful conversations.  Studies show significant academic benefits as well as increased emotional well-being, higher self-esteem, improved mental health literacy, and better communication skills (Hussa Farrell, 2015; Gehreke et al, 2024). This peer-to-peer model naturally reduces stigma while building essential life skills that benefit both mentors and mentees. When high school students work with middle or elementary school students, these connections build leadership characteristics, self-confidence, and social skills across age groups (Hussa Farrell, 2015). Studies show mentored youth are more likely to graduate high school and attend college compared to non-mentored peers (Gehreke et al, 2024).

Perhaps most importantly, peer resiliency programs assist in normalizing the discussions about mental health and resilience. Rather than waiting for crises to emerge, these interventions focus on primary prevention—building protective factors before problems develop. This approach aligns with public health models that emphasize upstream interventions to improve population-level outcomes (Neumark-Sztainer, 2006; Reupert, 2017; Bhushan et al, 2020).

Sharpen Peer Resiliency (SPR)

The Sharpen model for improving peer resiliency stems from 20 years of real world expertise. We have found three key components that lead to success:

1. First, mentors receive comprehensive training in mental health literacy, trauma awareness, suicide prevention, and mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques. This foundation ensures they can facilitate meaningful conversations while recognizing when professional support is needed (Levy et al, 2025; Jenner et al, 2022; Rios et al, 2025; Biber & Rothman, 2023).

2. Second, SPR content delivery incorporates multiple learning modalities—videos, reflective activities, and discussion prompts—to accommodate different learning styles. SPR feature peer stories of resilience and strength which has shown most effective at boosting engagement and reducing stigma and humanizing mental health challenges (Levy et al, 2025; Biber & Rothman, 2023; Davis et al, 2025).

3. Finally the SPR program encourages mentors to maintain clear boundaries and expectations. Peer mentors understand that they are not therapists; they're trained facilitators who know how to connect participants to appropriate professional resources when needed.

   
   

For a full look at implementation examples and sample modules, download the free SPR Program Guide.

Sharpen Peer Resiliency Program Guide.pdf

Download PDF • 3.82MB

References

Biber, D., & Rothman, R. (2023). Mental health literacy training for college female peer mentors: A pilot study. Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, 14(1), 181–191. https://doi.org/10.1108/HESWBL-06-2023-0148.

Clarke-Midura, J., Poole, F., Pantic, K., Hamilton, M., Sun, C., Allan, V. (2018). How Near Peer Mentoring Affects Middle School Mentees. SIGCSE '18: Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Pages 664 – 669. https://doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159525

Davis, A., Gross, S., McEntyre, K., Biber, D., Meyer, A. (2025). Using an Out-of-School Time Initiative to Increase Access and Enjoyment of Physical Activity Opportunities for Adolescent Girls: A RE-AIM Evaluation.  Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, 33, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1123/wspaj.2025-0030

Gehreke, L., Schilling, H., Kauffeld, S. (2024). Effectiveness of peer mentoring in the study entry phase: A systematic review. Review of Education, 12(1), e3462. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3462

Haft, S., Chen, T., LeBlanc, C., Tencza, F., Hoeft, F. (2019). Impact of mentoring on socio-emotional and mental health outcomes of youth with learning disabilities and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Child & Adolescent Mental Health 24(4), 318-328. https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.12331

Hussa-Farrell, 2015. Between 2006-2017, Robyn Hussa Farrell served as Executive Director of the nonprofit agency Mental Fitness. During her tenure, Hussa produced over 25 live and online programs, including the award-winning Flourish peer resiliency program and NORMAL THE MUSICAL which toured to over 200 schools. After each presentation she incorporated program response forms and live Q&A discussions with youth and clinical psychologists. Over 20,000 people participated in the Flourish peer resiliency and NORMAL musical programs. Additionally, Hussa developed a peer resiliency program (“Flourish” and “5 Minute Mindfulness”) that ran for 5 years in middle and high schools and became the mindfulness curricula for Resilient Schools programs in South Carolina (with over 5,000 educators trained on the model). Finally, she created live events, interactive mental health fairs, teen mash up campaigns, videos, and documentary films featuring youth stories of resilience and strength. She deployed much of this content in the early days on a YouTube channel with over 1 million views over a four-year period. The average age of the participants in all of these programs was 15 and ranged from 5 to 25. This is the foundational research that led to the creation of Sharpen.

Jenner, E., Lass, K., Walsh, S., Demby, H., Leger, R., & Falk, G. (2022). Effects of Cross-Age Peer Mentoring Program within a Randomized Controlled Trial. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 16(3), 473–500. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2022.2130119

Levy, J., Hussa Farrell, R., Farrell, T., Pish, M., Fassas, J., Reed, E., Hinshaw, S., & Biber, D. (forthcoming). A program evaluation of the Sharpen® Mental Health Literacy (Sharpen® MHL) college course at a southeastern university in the United States. Journal of American College Health.

Rios, I., Hussa-Farrell, R., Farrell, T., Biber, D. (2025). Ongoing measurement of a 5-year suicide prevention program funded through NY Office of Mental Health in process.