Mental Health, Wellbeing, & Resilience

In the past few years, students have experienced a dramatic increase in mental health concerns including anxiety, depression, and behavior disorders. School-based programs focused on building social and emotional skills can proactively support students' mental health.

Early screening with the DESSA helps proactively identify student strengths and needs. Educators can engage students with a positive, strength-based focus to foster emotional resilience and student wellbeing.

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Shift from a reactive to proactive approach to championing mental health.

Focusing on positive student behavior and proactively identifying strengths in social and emotional development can prevent the enormous costs and impact of mental, emotional, and behavioral challenges. Within a class period, educators can access reliable data to quickly reinforce student strengths to help them set goals, see their own value, build health relationships, and get inspired to learn.

Strength-Based Screening and Assessment

Focusing on positive student behavior and proactively identifying strengths and opportunities for growth in student development can prevent the enormous costs and impact of mental, emotional, and behavioral problems.

Student Wellbeing

The DESSA suite of assessments empowers students with the tools to know their strengths and equips them with strategies to practice building on their strengths to feel more confident in their abilities.

Resilience

Educators proactively identify at-risk students and use the Aperture System’s roadmap to support their students’ social and emotional skill development. This is crucial to students successfully navigating the pressures/stress they may face in school or the workforce and bolsters resilience.

“Mental health support had been talked about anecdotally, now we had data to back it up. Once we showed it to administration and educators, they saw the immediate value.”

- Patrick Farrell, Intervention and Support Supervisor, Charlottesville City Schools

The Aperture Approach to Mental Health

Developing social and emotional competence is crucial in promoting and supporting students’ mental wellbeing. With the Aperture System, students are better able to apply knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to understand and manage emotions, establish positive relationships, set and achieve goals, and make responsible decisions.

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Our Products

DESSA Aperture System

The DESSA-mini gives educators the ability to proactively identify in 60 seconds and with 95% accuracy which students need additional support, rather than relying on the occurrence of negative student behavior as the indicator of needed support. For a more in-depth look at each student’s specific strengths and needs, the full DESSA assessment can be completed in just 5-8 minutes per student. Some organizations administer the DESSA for a subset of students identified as needing further instruction, while others choose to administer the DESSA for all students.

DESSA Student Portal

The Student Portal prepares students with the skills to succeed after graduation. It allows students to self-assess their social-emotional competencies and receive immediate access to their results. Students are encouraged to use their results to set personal goals and use research-based strategies through a self-guided, mobile-friendly platform to support their social-emotional growth.

Strategies and Interventions

The Strategies and Interventions Package includes:

90 research-based universal and small group activities to promote students' social and emotional competence
Targeted multi-week interventions programs
Data-driven instructional strategy recommendations based on DESSA assessment results
Strategies tracking to document instructional strategy implementation

Am I Supporting Half the Child or the Whole Child?

Listen in as Dr. Lisa Micou and C.A.R.E.S. founders Maria Ragali and Timothy Viens discuss the importance of social-emotional skills in academic and behavioral achievement.

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