School-based mindfulness training doesn’t appear to boost well-being or improve the mental health of teenagers, according to a study that found many students were bored with the course and didn’t practice it at home.
At a time when there is growing concern about poor mental health among children and young people in the UK, researchers wanted to find out whether a universal mindfulness intervention in secondary schools could help build resilience and have a positive impact on pupils’ wellbeing.
Mindfulness has become a popular meditation technique aimed at focusing the mind on the present moment and involves learning how to pay attention and manage feelings and behaviors to improve resilience to external stressors.
Although it has been found to help symptoms of depression and anxiety in some studies, researchers from the My Resilience in Adolescence (Myriad) study found that a school-wide offer of mindfulness was no more effective than what schools were already doing to support student mental health with social-emotional learning.
The research is based on a group of five studies conducted over eight years by around 100 researchers working with 28,000 teenagers and 650 teachers in 100 schools. It usually involved teachers teaching mindfulness themselves, followed by learning how to pass it on to their students in 10 30-50 minute lessons.
While the evidence for the effectiveness of this approach among students was “weak,” the researchers found that it had a positive impact on participating teachers, reducing burnout, and also on the overall school climate or culture, although these positive effects were relatively short-lived. lived.
The study, from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter, King’s College London, University College London and Penn State in the US, was published in the journal Evidence-Based Mental Health.
Prof Mark Williams, founding director of the Oxford Mindfulness Center and co-researcher at the University of Oxford, said the findings confirm the huge burden of mental health challenges facing young people and the urgent need to find a way to help
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“They also show that the idea of mindfulness doesn’t help — it’s the practice that counts.” Those students who got involved improved, he said, but most didn’t. “On average, they trained just once in the 10 weeks of the course. And it’s like going to the gym once and hoping you’ll get better. But why didn’t they practice? Well, because a lot of them found it boring.”
He continued: “If today’s young people are to be enthusiastic enough to practice mindfulness, then updating training to meet different needs and giving them a say in the approach they prefer are vital next steps.”
Dr Elaine Lockhart, chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Child and Adolescent Faculty, which co-owns Evidence-Based Mental Health, said children and young people were suffering in the wake of the pandemic.
“Mindfulness can be helpful in managing emotions, but it will not be enough for these children and young people who need support for their mental wellbeing, especially in the wake of the pandemic.
“They will need a full range of services to meet their mental health needs, and getting help early is absolutely key to preventing mental health problems from developing or escalating into adulthood.”
Dr Dan O’Hare, vice-chair of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Educational and Child Psychology, added: “The findings from this study certainly suggest that there is a need to consider whether the mental health support we provide to teenagers in schools is fit for purpose.
“While mindfulness sessions can be extremely helpful, it is important to understand that this is not a surface-level intervention and how children and teenagers respond to it will be influenced by the context in which it is taught and the school environment.”
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