The Sharpen Mental Health Literacy (SMHL) program is now available as an evidence-based resource for high school students on the prestigious Chad’s Legacy Project site, aided by the expertise of the University of Washington School Mental Health Assessment Research and Training (SMART) Center.
The Sharpen Mental Health Literacy (SMHL) program has been incorporated into the comprehensive mental health education library, providing educators and school systems easy access to the very best in teen resiliency programming.
To meet the growing need to decrease stigma and improve mental health literacy among adolescents, the leadership of Chad’s Legacy and UW SMART Center have added Sharpen’s peer-focused, mental health literacy program to help high school students normalize the conversation around mental health, learn strategies for supporting a friend, improve suicide prevention best practices and reduce stigma.
Chad’s Legacy Project’s Mental Health Instruction (MHI) program library was created as a resource for schools that wish to support their students in building mental health awareness. The components of curricula and programs listed on the MHI site are verified by the University of Washington SMART Center on behalf of Chad’s Legacy Project before they are approved for library inclusion.
In response to learning that the curriculum would be added to the Mental Health Instruction site, Resiliency Technologies President & CEO and Sharpen system founder Robyn Hussa Farrell said, “Our whole team is honored to know that Sharpen Mental Health Literacy will be added to the list of best-in-class prevention curriculum to be included in the MHI library. This five-hour course is the culmination of decades of prevention research in schools, universities and healthcare settings learning how best to translate cutting edge science into an engaging framework. The course was developed with hundreds of experts and with young people who bravely shared their stories of resilience and strength so that others can benefit."
Sharpen Mental Health Literacy program
Although there have been many mental health literacy and prevention programs created, few have been designed by conducting deep listening sessions with young adults and adolescents in order to determine the best implementation strategies that integrate the voices of diverse youth and their families. Sharpen MHL was designed working alongside a wide variety of behavioral health providers and community partners. Their voices and expertise have been incorporated into the video-based mental health literacy program.
SMHL Evidence-base
Sharpen’s research studies have shown high adoption and utilization rates in college and medical student settings (Berreta et al, 2023).. In one of our published studies, 1656 medical and undergraduate students from five universities in the Appalachian region in the U.S. participated in a study deploying Sharpen psychoeducational modules, including mental health literacy (MHL), social-emotional learning, mindfulness-based stress reduction, and suicide prevention content to promote protective factors for students. Via a retrospective, cross-sectional design, the results indicated high implementation and maintenance of the modules deployed through the Sharpen mental health and wellbeing service.
Robyn Hussa Farrell interviewing clinicians for the SMHL program.
Through Sharpen’s unique peer resiliency model, adolescents are able to engage into conversations about mental health. Promoting mental health literacy is a focus to enhance knowledge and beliefs about mental health to recognize, manage, and prevent onset of mental, emotional, and behavioral health problems (Jorm et al, 1997). A recent pilot study by Biber & Rothman evaluated SMHL with college females, revealing six qualitative themes regarding training effectiveness, including (1) Help-Seeking, (2) Stress Management, (3) Tailored Guidance to Resources, (4) Understanding Warning Signs, (5) Body Image Awareness, and (6) Engaging with Mentees. This study provided initial support for Sharpen modules when implemented with undergraduate females (Biber & Rothman, 2023).
Grace shares her mental health journey in the brief clip. There are over 135 expert and peer documentaries within the SMHL high school program.
The Sharpen modules are also designed to reduce mental health stigma and promote first aid (Amado-Rodríguez et al, 2022). Each module contains fifteen elements that include documentary film stories of resilience and strength, basic health education regarding risk and protective factors for mental health, and many resources to get the conversation started to help a friend or loved one. In over 400 surveys and several community-based research projects, adolescents were able to engage into the Sharpen system, find the service relatable, enjoy the discreet connection to treatment (Biber et al, 2023), and they recommend the service to their peers (Biber, 2023; Fadel et al, 2024).
Chad's Legacy Project: https://www.chadslegacy.org/board
References
Amado-Rodríguez, I. D., Casañas, R., Mas-Expósito, L., Castellví, P., Roldan-Merino, J. F., Casas, I., ... & Fernández-San Martín, M. I. (2022). Effectiveness of mental health literacy programs in primary and secondary schools: A systematic review with meta-analysis. Children, 9(4), 480.
Berreta, K., Nguyen, C., Stoner, A. M., Ridgeway, L., Wilson, A., Fadel, N., & Biber, D. (2023). A RE-AIM Analysis of a Mental Health App for Undergraduate and Medical Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Cross-Sectional Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(13), 6266. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20136266
Biber, D. (2023). The impact of an mhealth mental health literacy training for foster parents prepared for trends in psychology. Trends in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-023-00348-x
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
Biber, D. D., Davis, A., & Stewart, B. (2023). Heads Up! Using a Mobile Platform for Division II Student-Athlete Mental Health Screening. Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/21520704.2023.2282191
Fadel N.; Stoner, A., Berreta, K., et al. (2024). A Process Evaluation of a Mobile App for Medical Students Aimed at Increasing Resilience and Decreasing Stigma in Mental Health. Cureus 16(6): e63054. doi:10.7759/cureus.63054
Hussa-Farrell, R. (2024). 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 NORMAL THE MUSICAL education program which toured to over 200 schools. After each presentation, Hussa incorporated program response forms and held live Q&A discussions with youth and clinical psychologists. Over 20,000 people participated in the NORMAL musical program. Additionally, Hussa developed a peer focused resiliency program (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.
Jorm, A. F., Korten, A. E., Jacomb, P. A., Christensen, H., Rodgers, B., & Pollitt, P. (1997). “Mental health literacy”: a survey of the public's ability to recognise mental disorders and their beliefs about the effectiveness of treatment. Medical journal of Australia, 166(4), 182-186.
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