RÉSO vs iSmart

RESO.cool… what’s that? RESO.cool is a free mobile App designed for you and with you in mind. What does RÉSO stands for? RÉSO is a french acronym for Réseau (Network), Écoute (Listen), Soutien (Support), Oriente (Guide). Simply said, the RÉSO listens, supports and guides you when you need it the most. So, what does RESO.cool do? It is a playful and stimulating environment where you are invited to fill a tool box. Your toolbox is a list of ideas and information that you gather while you are doing well, in order to have answers and strategies at times when nothing is going right. Sometimes, when your feelings get confused, when the pain and/or suffering takes up all the space or when you are faced with great difficulty, thinking about solutions to get better becomes almost impossible. By putting your safety plan in your phone, you have access to a solution to get you moving when everything isn’t working so well. You will find within the App: • Tips on taking care of yourself • Signs and changes to look out for that will guide you in helping your friend(s) when you may be worried about them, but also the resources necessary for you to provide the best help possible. • Easy to use tools in order to be able to identify those moments when you don’t feel so good and what to do when they occur. • Easy access to resources available 24/7 in order to talk to someone, to be listened to, to chat on-line, without being judged, with people who understand what you are going though. • Easily and from you phone or tablet, you will be able to find the resource that is closest to your location thanks to the geolocation feature included. The purpose of RESO.cool is to support you by putting all this information within the same App in order to help you prevent difficult times and to know how to deal with them without too much hassle. The App also does this: • Provides simple and effective teaching material to the different counsellors, teachers and/ help providers so that the application is always used in the best way possible. • Educate people who will be part of your network by directing them to a simple and comprehensive website informing them about the resources, sites to visit, attitudes to adopt etc. and that regardless if it's for your friend, parent, significant adult, teacher, or counsellor.

Discover what scientists who work on human stress know about how to deal with their stress. Researchers at the Center for Studies on Human Stress (CSHS) (http://www.humanstress.ca/) study the stress we experience daily and its impact on our health. Everyday stressors are characterised by four elements: low sense of control, unpredictability, novelty and ego threats. The moment the brain perceives one of these elements in the environment, it sends a stress response asking for the release of a specific hormone called cortisol. Once released, cortisol eventually reaches the brain and latches itself onto the parts of the brain in charge of emotions and memory. Everybody experiences stress; stress is an adaptive response despite its sometimes embarrassing manifestations (fast heart rate, voice shaking, sweating, etc.). The danger of stress lies in its repetition, what we call chronic stress, because the cortisol produced eventually damages the parts of the brain in charge of emotions and memory and puts us at risk for physical and mental illnesses. We can gauge our level of stress when it occurs, but then, as the day goes on, we tend to forget about it making the identification of chronic stressors almost impossible. iSmart will ask you to enter your level of stress periodically (ideally every two hour during your daily activities) and will keep a detailed log of all your entries. Use scientifically-proven techniques to lower your reaction to stress. When your stress will be too high, iSMART will suggest watching short videos describing proven techniques to help reduce your manifestations of stress. These techniques have been proven effective by science in reducing levels of cortisol and in decreasing manifestations of stress. Identify your chronic stressors iSMART will warn you the moment it detects a repetition of stress responses that places you at risk for chronic stress and will then ask you to describe what you're currently experiencing to help you identify your chronic stressor. Neutralize your chronic stressors with the help of scientifically proven strategies. Once a chronic stressor has been identified, iSmart will suggest strategies to help you deconstruct and neutralize the stressor. These strategies have been proven effective by researchers at the Centre for the Studies of Human Stress. They are also commonly used in the context of other chronic stress prevention programs that evaluate their benefits for children, adolescents, workers and even elderly adults. iSmart, a scientifically sound mobile application iSmart was tested with 70 workers over a one month period. Participants had to enter their level of stress every hour and follow the application's advice. In addition to participants' overall satisfaction with using the app, questionnaire results and cortisol measurements show that iSMART helped people experiencing the most stress. These results make iSmart the first mobile app backed by science.