This week in Minneapolis, our longtime research partner Dr. Duke Biber of James Madison University is presenting our poster at the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) Annual Conference: Sharpen® Athlete: An Integrated Clinical Triage Platform for Athlete Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. We found that over three seasons in a Division I athletic program, every student-athlete screened via CAT-MH® through Sharpen® clinical decision support and triage platform flagged for elevated suicide risk was seen by a clinician the same day and provided immediate protective interventions.
Why Sharpen® Athlete?
More than 1 in 3 athletes report symptoms of depression or anxiety (Gouttebarge et al., 2019; Moore et al., 2025). In a recent survey of NCAA student-athletes, 39.7% reported lifetime suicidal ideation (Bond et al., 2026).
Athletes are trained to push through pain. Most of them will never walk into a counseling center on their own, so we need to bring the program to them. Here's how we did that.
Implementation
From 2023 through 2025, a large Division I university made mental health a required station at its required preseason orientation, right alongside physical health, academic services and nutrition. Every student-athlete rotated through.
At the mental health station, they logged into Sharpen®, completed the CAT-MH®, a roughly seven-minute adaptive screen covering nine areas, including depression, anxiety, substance use and suicide risk.
Every athlete received: • Universal screening. • Real-time triage. Results flowed to a clinician dashboard, so psychotherapists could review, provide digital interventions, address clinically indicated concerns. • Peer-focused prevention. Every athlete got the Sharpen® Athlete program for 60 days: short modules containing activities, research and documentary films featuring other athletes and coaches talking honestly about mental health, stigma, coping, athlete health, disordered eating prevention and suicide prevention.
What we found
• 1,275 screenings across three seasons and 14 men’s and women’s sports.
• 126 athletes (9.9%) were flagged for elevated suicide risk. 100% of them received same-day clinical triage and intervention.
• Engagement climbed every year. In 2023, when modules were not directly connected to screening, only 22.4% of athletes opened them. Athlete-adapted campaigns in 2024 reached open rates as high as 78.7%. In 2025, with screening, triage and content in one mobile-first platform, 98.4% of screened athletes (491 of 499) engaged with the mental health interventions.
• 491 athletes generated 51,243 interactions, averaging 7.2 visits and 104 actions each.
• Every clinician surveyed (n = 4) reported satisfaction with ease of deployment, same-day access, care coordination and clinical outcome support.
• Content featuring athletes’ and coaches’ own stories was associated with marked gains in engagement and in reducing stigma.
The team
We’ve been working alongside athletes and coaches on mental health, disordered eating and suicide prevention for close to twenty years. For most of that time, the hardest gap wasn’t knowing someone was struggling, it was figuring out exactly how to help.
That’s the whole point of Sharpen®: screening, triage and prevention in one place.
Research like this takes a village, and ours is a very good one. Huge thanks to Dr. Biber for leading the submission and carrying the poster to Minneapolis, to the athletic department staff and clinicians who made same-day care a priority, and to all co-authors:
• Duke Biber, PhD, CMPC, NBC-HWC, James Madison University
• Victoria Cosgrove, PhD, Stanford University School of Medicine
• Ashlee Davis, PhD, NBC-HWC, Georgia Health Policy Center, Georgia State University
• Tim Farrell, Resiliency Technologies, Inc.
• Jeane Han, Resiliency Technologies, Inc. and UC Berkeley
• Robyn Hussa-Farrell, MFA, E-RYT, Resiliency Technologies, Inc.
• Jared Minkel, PhD, Independent Clinical and Consulting Psychologist
• Nora Stagner, M.S., Adaptive Testing Technologies
• Bridgette Stewart, M.Ed., NBC-HWC, CWP, University of West Georgia
• Luis Tani, MD, Resiliency Technologies, Inc. and UC Berkeley
• Hannah Wulczyn, MPA, Adaptive Testing Technologies
Bring Sharpen® Athlete to your community. Contact us: https://sharpenhealth.com/about/contact
Topics