For schools working to support student mental well-being, one question is becoming increasingly important:
Are we looking only for signs that something is wrong, or are we also identifying the strengths and skills that help students thrive?
A student who appears to be doing well may still be struggling with anxiety, loneliness, or other internalizing concerns that aren't immediately visible to educators. At the same time, a student who is experiencing behavioral or emotional challenges may have important strengths that can be developed to help them navigate those challenges.
This is why a risk and resilience framework offers a powerful approach to supporting student well-being. Rather than viewing mental health through a single lens, schools can look at both the factors that may put students at risk and the protective factors that help students adapt, cope, and thrive.
Student well-being encompasses much more than whether a student is experiencing emotional or behavioral concerns. It includes positive emotions, relationships, engagement, academic efficacy, a sense of purpose, and the ability to cope with challenges in school and in life.
That distinction matters for schools.
If educators focus exclusively on identifying students who are struggling, they may miss opportunities to proactively strengthen the skills that protect students from future challenges. And if they focus only on students' strengths, they may overlook students experiencing significant concerns beneath the surface.
Supporting well-being requires both.
A risk and resilience framework recognizes that a student's ability to adapt and thrive is influenced by the interaction between the risks they experience and the resilience factors in their lives. For schools, the goal isn't to eliminate every risk factor—many factors, such as family circumstances or socioeconomic conditions, are outside a school's control. Instead, schools can focus on the risk and resilience factors they can identify and influence.
One of the challenges of relying on traditional observation alone is that some student needs are much easier to see than others.
Externalizing concerns—such as aggression, bullying, rule-breaking, or acting out—are often visible to teachers. Internalizing concerns, including anxiety, sadness, withdrawal, and loneliness, can be much harder to recognize. The white paper notes that teachers may particularly underidentify internalizing concerns as students get older.
Universal screening can help schools move beyond relying on what adults happen to notice.
A strength-based measure such as the DESSA provides information about the competencies students are already demonstrating, while risk-based measures can identify emotional and behavioral concerns that may otherwise go unnoticed. Importantly, these aren't interchangeable perspectives.
The research behind the white paper found that they can identify different groups of students who may need support.
Among the 254 middle school students included in the study:
The takeaway is significant:
A student can demonstrate meaningful strengths and still need support—and a student who isn't exhibiting obvious risk can still have skills that need to be developed.
That is precisely why looking at both risk and resilience provides a more complete picture.
The good news is that resilience isn't simply something students either have or don't have.
The white paper identifies social and emotional competencies, including optimistic thinking, emotion regulation, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making—as important resilience factors. Positive relationships with teachers and peers can also support students' ability to regulate emotions, respond to challenges, and engage in learning.
This shifts the role of schools from simply identifying problems to also building protective factors.
And that's where assessment data becomes especially valuable.
When screening identifies a student or group of students who could benefit from additional support, the goal shouldn't be to stop at a score or classification. The data should help educators answer:
What skills do these students need to strengthen—and what can we do next?
The DESSA is designed to provide actionable information about students' social and emotional competencies, including:
These competencies represent more than assessment categories. They are skills students can practice and develop.
That's why the combination of DESSA and Move This World is so important.
Within the DESSA x Move This World System, educators can use DESSA data to understand where students are demonstrating strengths and where additional instruction may be beneficial. They can then leverage Move This World's video-based instructional resources to give students structured opportunities to practice the skills that support resilience and mental well-being.
Instead of simply identifying that a student needs support with self-management, for example, educators can provide consistent instruction and practice designed to help students develop skills for recognizing emotions, managing responses, and navigating challenging situations.
The assessment identifies where to focus. Instruction provides a way to build the skill.
And when those pieces are connected, screening becomes more than an identification exercise—it becomes part of a proactive system for strengthening student well-being.
The study provides additional evidence for this approach.
Students with higher levels of reported well-being tended to have higher DESSA scores and lower levels of internalizing and externalizing concerns. When the researchers combined resilience and risk measures, the resulting model correctly classified approximately 70% of students' reported well-being levels.
These findings reinforce an important principle:
The earlier schools understand both what students are experiencing and what strengths they can build upon, the more opportunities educators have to respond proactively.
This is particularly important in a school environment where mental health professionals are often in short supply. A universal, preventive approach can help schools identify students earlier and provide support before concerns become more significant.
It also supports a more sustainable approach to MTSS: one in which data isn't collected simply to place students into tiers, but is used to determine what support students need and what skills schools can intentionally develop.
There is no single score that can tell educators everything they need to know about a student's mental well-being.
But a risk and resilience framework offers a valuable way to think about what schools can do.
Look for risk. Identify strengths. Build protective factors. Provide targeted support. Measure progress.
The research summarized in the white paper demonstrates that risk and resilience measures can provide complementary information—and that using both can help schools identify students who might otherwise be missed.
The opportunity now is to turn that insight into action.
With the DESSA x Move This World System, schools can connect the dots between identifying students' strengths and needs and providing the instruction they need to develop the competencies that promote resilience and well-being.
Because the goal of screening shouldn't simply be to find students who are struggling.
It should be to see students sooner, understand the whole student, and give every student opportunities to build the skills they need to thrive.
Download the full white paper, Promoting Student Well-Being Through a Risk and Resilience Framework: Implications for Screening, to explore the research, methodology, findings, and implications for school-based screening in greater depth.