Mindfulness practice among secondary school students : its psychological process and effects

Abstract

Mindfulness is effective in enhancing emotion regulation and well-being in adults, but not much is known about the psychological mechanisms involved. Also, research about promoting adolescents’ mindfulness in school context is at nascent stage. In view of this background, two studies were conducted to investigate how mindfulness was related to adolescents’ well-being in school setting. Study 1 was a correlational study aimed at identifying the possible psychological mechanisms that may explain the positive links between mindfulness and adolescents’ well-being. Participants were 114 Chinese seventh graders from a local secondary school. The results indicated that mindfulness was positively related to emotion regulation, high level of positive affect, self-acceptance, and positive relationship, and low level of perceived stress and negative affect. Mediation analyses showed that emotion regulation was a significant mediator between mindfulness and adolescents’ well-being, including perceived stress, positive affect, self-acceptance and positive relationship. However, no significant correlation was found between adolescents’ mindfulness and their performance on the Emotional Interference Task. Study 2 was a randomized controlled experiment that involved a school-based mindfulness program for adolescents. It aimed at examining the program’s effectiveness on adolescents’ well-being and the psychological mechanism involved. The participants were 128 seventh graders. They were randomly assigned into one of two conditions: a mindfulness course or life education as usual. Pretest, posttest and follow-ups data were collected to evaluate the effects of the mindfulness course on adolescents. The posttest data showed that participants in the mindfulness condition (n = 62) did not show significant improvement in mindfulness. Most of them did not do regular mindfulness practice at home. In fact, they had significant drop of emotion regulation, positive affect and positive relationship when comparing to the life education group. The follow-up data three months later did not show significant difference between two groups. Paired sample t tests showed a significant decrease of perceived stress in both groups. A significant drop of self-acceptance in the control group was also found in the follow-up data. The results of Study 1 identified emotion regulation as a mediator between mindfulness and well-being among Hong Kong teenagers. Mindfulness had both direct and indirect effects to adolescents’ well-being. Insignificant finding of Emotion Interference Task might be partly due to distractible administration environment and low intensity of emotion provoking pictures. The results of Study 2 indicated that the mindfulness course failed to enhance mindfulness of the adolescents. The course delivered with good treatment fidelity, but the home practice compliance was low. The experimental group had lower mindfulness at the beginning. Decreases of their emotion regulation and well-being in the posttest might reflect their vulnerabilities to stress before examination at the end of the school year. The present project has indicated that mindfulness is positively related to adolescents’ emotion regulation and well-being. Yet, knowing mindfulness cognitively is necessary but not sufficient to enhance one’s emotion regulation and well-being. Regular practice is crucial for its effect. Building mindfulness culture in schools may help adolescents to establish regular practice.