Mindfulness Research with Children and Adolescents
School-Based Mindfulness Instruction: An RCT
Erica M.S. Sibinga, Lindsey Webb, Sharon R. Ghazarian, Jonathan M.Ellen These findings support the hypothesis that mindfulness instruction improves psychological functioning and may ameliorate the negative effects of stress and reduce trauma-associated symptoms among vulnerable urban middle school students.
Jacinda K. Dariotis , Roxanne Mirabal-Beltran, Fallon Cluxton-Keller, Laura Feagans Gould, Mark T. Greenberg, Tamar Mendelson (2015) This study addresses two primary research questions: (1) What skills did students learn, retain, and utilize outside the program? and (2) What changes did classroom teachers expect and observe among program recipients? Four major themes related to skill learning and application emerged as follows: (1) youths retained and utilized program skills involving breath work and poses; (2) knowledge about health benefits of these techniques promoted self-utilization and sharing of skills; (3) youths developed keener emotional appraisal that, coupled with new and improved emotional regulation skills, helped de-escalate negative emotions, promote calm, and reduce stress; and (4) youths and teachers reported realistic and optimistic expectations for future impact of acquired program skills. We discuss implications of these findings for guiding future research and practice.
Adolescent mindfulness and psychopathology: The role of emotion regulation
Christopher A.Pepping, MeganDuvenage, TimothyJ.Cronin, AnthonyLyons (2016) In brief, dispositional mindfulness appears to be a protective individual difference characteristic during adolescence, and capacity for emotion regulation may be implicated in its effects on specific symptoms of psychopathology.
Fung,J.,Guo,S.,Jin,J.,Bear,L.,Lau,A.(2016) This study examined the feasibility and efficacy of a 12-week mindfulness intervention in a wait-list controlled trial of 19 Latino-American and Asian-American middle school students with elevated mood symptoms. The pooled pre-to-post treatment analyses revealed that mindfulness led to a reduction in parent-reported externalizing problems, youth-reported internalizing problems, and youth-reported use of expressive suppression. Overall, this pilot study offers feasibility and efficacy data for mindfulness-based program as a potential treatment for behavior problems for ethnic minority youth with elevated mood symptoms.