Friend2Friend: Emotional & Mental Wellness

The goal of Friend2Friend: Emotional & Mental Wellness is to promote peer support and lifelong wellness.

Learning objectives:

• Learn about mental health and wellness while reducing the stigma
• Identify warning signs of psychological distress, including verbal, behavioral, and situational clues
• Build skills to approach a peer in a manner to motivate them to access support
• Become comfortable asking a friend if they are thinking about suicide

CASEL Competency Alignment:

Social Awareness & Relationship Skills - strengthen communication and healthy relationship skills

• Demonstrate empathy and support help-seeking
• Identify own emotions and those of others

Self-Management & Self-Awareness Skills - develop strategies for managing stress and making healthy decisions

• Identify and use coping strategies
• Use feedback constructively
• Identify and use resources of family, school community
• Build self-efficacy and growth mindset

Responsible Decision-Making - grow critical thinking skills

• Identify solutions to personal and social problems

Skills

• Emotional awareness
• Help-seeking skills
• Empathy and active listening skills
• Stress management and coping skills

Evidence-based models and techniques, game mechanics, and key learning and assessment principles ensure users stay engaged and emerge with a deeper understanding of their ability to use their new skills in real life. Research shows that with experiential practice, increased emotional engagement and reflective thinking leads to stronger self-efficacy and behavior change.

Experienced teachers, child psychologists, and childcare experts contributed to the simulation content.

Students receive customized feedback based on their in-simulation choices.

The simulation is available online 24/7. Users are asked to complete pre-, post-, and 3-month follow up surveys to assess changes in skills. Attitudes, and behavior. Upon completion, users receive a certificate of completion.  Clients have access to usage reports and evaluation data via the Kognito client portal.