Centennial School in partnership with the co-founder of It’sOk App, Cody Gordon, uses technology to help support pupils’ mental health.
It’sOk App is an app that is used to support learners with their mental health.
The mental health of young people has been placed under an even bigger spotlight since the Covid-19 pandemic, where lockdowns, remote schooling and an absence of friends and peers increased levels of mental distress.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), depression, anxiety and behavioural disorders are among the leading causes of illness and disability among young people. Suicide is listed as the fourth leading cause of death among 15 to 19-year-olds.
Founder of Centennial Schools and a lifelong teacher, Shaun Fuchs, said he had seen first-hand the impact of mental distress on school children.
However, in his 30 years of experience in education, he said he had never seen the levels of anxiety and depression in young people as he did coming out of covid-19 pandemic.
“With this generation ‘Gen Z’ being the most digitally literate generation on the planet, a wellness app was entirely appropriate. This generation lives on their mobile phones, and using an app is natural for them. The wellness app we use, called It’sOk, enables our students to increase their emotional intelligence and mental well-being on a daily basis.
“It also provides teachers and parents with accurate data on how our children are doing.
“The app gives students a platform for self-expression and emotional education without them having to approach an adult. It is tough for kids to admit their struggles, this app gives them a safe space where it is easy for them to express their feelings while also giving the school the data it needs to intervene if there are issues,” Fuchs said.
Supporting Fuchs’s statement, Cody Gordon the co-founder of It’sOk app, said the passing of his father led him to create the app so that people could use it to deal with mental issues.
“The choice I made was to take responsibility for my life and to make it better. The continuous focus on my emotional intelligence, and well-being, has had the biggest impact on my life and unfortunately these skills have not been integrated into our school curriculum.
“When we learn about almost everything at school, why is there no time spent on learning about our emotions and how to use them effectively in a practical manner to benefit us in the real world? We need to destigmatise mental well-being and make it a priority, just as we do everything else,” he said.
Gordon said an app was central to creating a tool to assist young people with their mental health journey. “It’s where kids want to be. I knew it had to relate to them, their intrinsic behaviours and be a seamless process. It’s super fun and engaging too.”
He said the usage of the app at Centennial Schools had increased and people had made it their daily habit to use it.
Furthermore, Fuchs said the app did not only focus on the negative. “It covers the full spectrum of emotions. We also want our students to understand what contributes to their happiness,” he added.
“You cannot put a price on the wellness of our children. We want to be proactive and determine areas of concern early on. As far as possible we want to avoid any personal tragedies as a result of mental health issues.
“With the app we can pick up on issues and hopefully intervene. If we can save one student, the app has paid for itself a million times over,” Fuchs said.
He also said parents were a critical cog in the wellness of their child’s mental health and played a vital role in developing the emotionally intelligent leaders of tomorrow.
The app’s operation is as follows:
- Every morning at the start of the school day, students log on to the app, click on the daily check-in, describe their range of emotions, both primary and secondary.
- There is an education section where they can see what their emotions mean and why they are feeling that way. This self-awareness feature ranges from personal to school reasons, self-harming, social media, or family reasons.
- There is a range of tools to use – from reaching out to someone at school, having a chat on the platform, breathing exercises, meditation, life skills, gratitude, panic buttons and an analysis of the data so that the students can understand themselves.
- Based on the usage of the app, parents receive well-being reports on their children which allows them to be proactive in understanding and managing their children’s well-being.
- Every teacher at Centennial has access to the app and they can receive messages from students, track emotions per grade per class, find out how and why their students are feeling a particular emotion. All this allows teachers to pick up on things as they are happening.
- Self-harm students are flagged. Key people are notified so that they can reach out to the student.
- The app is mobile, tablet, iPad or laptop-based.