Sharpen offers a variety of services to improve mental health outcomes and decrease heath disparities for both organizations and communities.
The benefits of the Sharpen system include participant increase in:
1. mental health awareness and literacy through our award-winning, evidence based mental health trainings
2. access to evidence-based healthy coping toolkits
3. engagement in the discussion around mental health
4. connection to validated mental health screenings
5. trauma-informed school and community best practices
6. help-seeking and connection to treatment resources
What is the Sharpen System?
The Sharpen system is built through a social-ecological framework that improves the shared protective factors for mental disorders, suicide ideation and trauma.
Sharpen provides
(i) health promotion programs that build protective factors for resilience (universal/promotion);
(ii) screening and targeted services to those who need more support (secondary prevention);
(iii) connection to intensive services to those who need care (tertiary intervention) as outlined below. 
The library of Sharpen age appropriate, psychoeducational content has been created with over 200 researchers in the field of public health, psychology and medicine and has shown to decrease stigma , improve resiliency, mental health literacy, and increase engagement with mental health treatment.
The Sharpen system has been part of over 50 research collaborations – list is available at www.SharpenMinds.com/Research. The library of culturally-competent and evidence-based psychoeducational modules are grouped into four primary categories that relate directly to the shared protective factors.
Our library improves: mental health literacy (MHL), emotional wellbeing (EW), mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and suicide prevention (SP) across diverse audience groups and populations. Each Sharpen application contains a customized library of modular content that includes peer-focused documentary film footage.
In addition, the modules are further customized based on “user story demographics” (parent, educator, high school student, veteran, etc.) specific to the organization deploying the app. For example, a high school student would see other high school student videos in their library of mental health literacy and mindfulness modules to decrease stigma and increase engagement.
In addition to a library of modular content, the Sharpen system connects individuals to mental health screening tools, referral pathways to community resources, and links to community organizations (such as free and reduced substance use and behavioral health treatment 3 ©Resiliency Technologies, Inc. 2023 13176 Kellam Court, San Diego, CA 92130, www.SharpenMinds.com providers) within their zip code as well as 988 and other crisis response support. The aim is for every individual to receive access to the Sharpen protective content directly from their mobile device or computer, thereby increasing awareness of mental health and healthy coping mechanisms.
Sharpen enables organizations or communities to deploy a vetted library of psychoeducational content through a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS). This provides end users with immediate, audience-appropriate tools that increase both individual and community resilience. In addition to its robust content creation and delivery capability, Sharpen is a HIPAA compliant communication platform in which moderation and authorizations are controlled by the client organization’s administration, and by Sharpen staff.
Sharpen’s peer-to-peer, documentary film educational modules consist of a robust library of over 600 courses. The library is built using eight evidence-based protective factors shown through research to improve resilience, while offering a toolkit for creating a healthy social environment that encourages mental health awareness, prevention and recovery support. Most notably, users are immediately directed to a vetted library of resources in their zip code for appropriate treatment and support services. For example, a college student with symptoms of depression is directed to the university counseling center. In addition, the same student is provided connection and contact information for local support groups, along with protective coping tools and strength-based video stories of resilience. Users receive protective content that is pro-actively scheduled at a regular interval (for example, a mindfulness activity once per week on a Sunday evening). These activities normalize the daily conversation around mental health, decrease mental health stigma, and improve protection for the user through Sharpen’s mindfulness based stress reduction (SMBSR) interventions.
The Sharpen team is currently involved in over 25 research collaborations, including with Stanford Medical School, NYU Langone, Emory University, Kennesaw State, University of Georgia, Medical University of South Carolina, Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine, Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, University of West Georgia and UC San Diego.
For further questions, please email Robyn Farrell at RFarrell@sharpenmind.org
Sharpen Team.
The Sharpen platform, created by Robyn Hussa-Farrell and Tim Farrell, has been extensively designed based on 20 years of research in mental health prevention in both school and community settings. Hussa-Farrell spent 20 years as a health educator in public and private schools, delivering prevention and resiliency programs in collaboration with interdisciplinary research teams. She has deployed and scaled multi-tiered mental health literacy and suicide prevention programs in 15 states and throughout Resilient Schools initiatives.
Hussa was invited to direct the suicide prevention task force in the Upstate of South Carolina for five years, in collaboration with Dr. Alex Karydi at the Education Development Center and Zero Suicide Initiative.
Throughout her journey, Hussa-Farrell partnered with her long-time collaborator, Tim Farrell (an award-winning, New York City journalist and documentary film producer) to create a robust and engaging psychoeducational library of over 4,000 videos featuring national researchers, practitioners and individuals with lived experience sharing stories of strength. In the course of their work, they have collaborated with national organizations such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, PurposeBuilt Communities, and Esther Dyson’s HICCup / Way to Wellville initiative.
In 2014 they created the Sharpen platform to deploy their award-winning programs and scale evidence-based mental health prevention programs to dozens of state agencies, local nonprofits, and behavioral health coalitions.
Attached are the following;
* Sharpen Services Overview (6-pages)
* Sharpen Success Metrics
* 2023 All Time Sharpen Family Data
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