Sonar

• Student mental health focus areas: Develop life and character-building skills, Promote Social and School Connectedness, Equip Staff and Students to Recognize and Respond to Distress, Ensure Student Access to Effective Mental Health Treatment
• Product category: Check-ins, Coaching/mentorship, Crisis intervention
• Tiers of intervention: Tier 1, Tier 2
• Grade levels: 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade
• End user(s): Parents, Students
• District experience: 1,000-5,000 students, 5,001-20,000 students
• Free version available?: Only paid versions of the product are available.
• Detail about availability: All States
• Use of AI: Yes. Sonar uses AI to support, not replace, human judgment. Youth do not chat directly with AI; every youth-facing message is reviewed and sent by a trained Wellbeing Coach. AI helps coaches understand context, suggest responses, flag potential risk, support triage/escalation, and improve consistency and speed.

• Intended outcomes: Sonar’s intended outcomes are to help schools and health systems support more youth, improve youth mental health and wellbeing, build practical coping skills, identify safety concerns earlier, connect youth to appropriate supports when needed, and improve academic and social outcomes.
• Demonstrated outcomes: Sonar has strong early, non-peer-reviewed outcomes data across school and healthcare deployments. Results show meaningful youth engagement, high retention, self-reported wellbeing improvement, improved attendance, fewer disciplinary incidents, and early improvements in validated symptom and impairment measures. RCTs are in progress.

• Privacy & security: Sonar is SOC 2 Type II certified and complies with HIPAA, FERPA, and COPPA. They use a closed-loop, HIPAA-compliant AI system: AI supports coaches but does not message youth directly, and data is not sold, used for ads, or used by third parties.
• Crisis protocols: Sonar has standard, clinically informed crisis and escalation protocols adaptable to each school/district. They handle safety concerns immediately, 24/7. Coaches are trained to identify risk, AI flags alert Sonar's on-call team, and protocols surface in the coach co-pilot. Coaches assess risk, stay engaged, notify emergency contacts/school as appropriate, and contact emergency services for imminent risk.

Sonar provides aggregate, anonymized data and insights, including student engagement, common wellbeing themes, overall trends, care referral/escalation patterns, and overall support recommendations. Schools do not receive individual conversations; student-specific information is shared only for safety/emergency reasons.

• Web accessibility: Sonar adheres to WCAG 2.1 AA.
• Language accessibility: Sonar supports all languages. Conversations can happen exclusively in that language if preferred by the student.