Mental health skill building is meant to equip resiliency-based tools to growth-minded individuals. Unlike therapy or counseling, it’s meant to be heavily participation and reflection based, giving time to understand ourselves, our community, and the world around us more with an emotional intelligence that often isn’t taught in schools.

Each teen is matched with a Near Peer Mentor. This is usually a college-aged individual with a background in crisis prevention. We also provide them with additional Sisu training. The Near Peer Mentor is close enough in age to your teenager to really “get” them and help them feel understood, and also has enough experience to help guide them in a positive direction. Near Peer Mentors send your teen a check-in message once a day, and are available for support 9—5PM throughout the week.

Sisu’s programs are 12-weeks long, divided into three modules, each 4 weeks long. Every week’s content is self-paced, meaning for some learners it may take longer than others. We estimate it to take no more than 10- 25 minutes to complete each week’s content depending on your pace as well as time for self-reflection.

These individuals are not available around the clock but during typical business hours from 9AM-7PM EST Monday through Friday. Each peer mentor will be reaching out to students for check-ins and to be a source of support depending on that student’s level of engagement or need. In the case a student chats when a peer mentor is unavailable, they will respond at the earliest availability during business hours.

Our curriculum was developed with a few goals in mind to build key communication skills and relationships within their community as well as home. Our stress & anxiety curriculum is focused around building the following skills in young people: Relationship Skills Self-Awareness Self-Management Social Awareness Responsible Decision-Making Self-Advocacy

Sisu is a mental health skill building platform focused on teaching social and emotional learning concepts around specific topics such as stress and anxiety and grief and loss in a 12-week time frame. Our curriculum has been vetted and shaped by top clinicians in the field from a social and emotional learning perspective. Sisu is not therapy though, and is not meant to substitute medical advice of any kind.

A 12-week program constitutes 3 modules of 4 weeks each. Each week involves a mix of content — a mix of short videos, questions for reflection, and interactive elements. Both teens and their parents will also receive a ‘weekly gem’ each week — a question that encourages them to open up about a certain topic. Only once you both submit your answers can you see one another’s responses.

During the pandemic, many young people suffered from mental health issues more than any other age group. We have seen a gap in many young people who have gone through a transition from going from remote back to in-person and want to provide additional support to those needing it. As GenZ is the first generation to be fully digitally native, there is also an opportunity for parents to understand how these topics have evolved in how young people view themselves as well as how they communicate about these topics.

All of Sisu’s content has been thoroughly reviewed and approved by qualified therapists, and much of it has actually been created in conjunction with them, too. Please note that Sisu is not therapy, it’s mental health skill building and education.

Sisu is a concept supported by Healthworx, an innovation studio started by CareFirst out of the BlueCross Network.

A Family Support Specialist is a licensed therapy provider — typically an LCSW. They have always completed graduate level work either social work, psychology or counseling.

Sisu programs are meant to provide support during challenging, complicated times on a variety of topics ranging from divorce to grief, depression and anxiety. Simply stated, they are topics we wished the world did a better job of preparing people for when they reach adulthood. From losing a job to being unable to make friends, there are many facets of life we don’t speak about or moments where we wished previous generations spoke more candidly about to prepare us for the reality vs our expectation.

Sisu takes the burden off teachers. All you need to do is choose to implement Sisu in your school community, invite your students to sign up, and leave the rest to us.

Sisu is a flexible supplement to their secondary SEL school curriculum. Although the curriculum can be completed during school hours, the support is available outside of classroom hours as well at a pace that feels comfortable for them. We estimate it to take no more than 10-25 minutes to complete each week’s content depending on the student’s pace as well as time for self-reflection.

Within the platform you will be able to schedule appointments with our family support specialists in order to goal-set and have structure for yourself, your family, or your teen while in the sisu program. That being said, the goal of these appointments depends on your specific family dynamics and if you would like to use the appointments with your teen, family, or your own mental wellness goals in mind. While some families may want their teen to attend the family support specialist meetings, it is completely optional if you would like to schedule as a family or standalone as a caregiver. Within the project, we may reference these appointments to teens but indicate it as optional depending on a teen and parent interest.

There are two ways parents can get enrolled in the platform: 1 - Sign up via the school code you will receive from our team. Our team will match you to your teen based on the email addresses received from Templeton Academy. 2 - Have your teen add you during their onboarding process by listing your email as the parent they would like to share the account with. You will be automatically matched to their account.

All responses on the sisu platform are confidential unless the teen completes the weekly gems which are shared between parent and teen. In the case a teen is raising issues of self-harm to themselves or others, you will be contacted by a member of our team. All other information teens share remains private in order to protect and ensure a safe environment for them to participate in the program.

Growth-mindset is about learning how to develop perspective around setbacks and challenges in life. While we are focusing on teens throughout the curriculum, we believe that all of us can listen and learn as adults. We all experience challenges in life. Our inspiration in developing these programs is about having conversations that our parents weren’t confident or able to have with us growing up. Collectively we can learn a lot from one another and we would like the next generation to have full advantage to resources we weren’t able to.

Our experience is meant to build resilience and growth mindset skills in both caregivers as well as their teens. As a caretaker, you will: ● Receive weekly summary of topics and videos your teen is learning about that week in the case you’re busy like most parents but want the gist ● Schedule three one-hour monthly appointments with a family support specialist of your choice ● Complete weekly gems, or insights shared between caretakers & teen in order to initiate conversations about coping skills and strategies for positive thinking ● Have access to full curriculum in the case you want to see what your teen is up to and know more