Brief Mindfulness-Based Interventions to Address Individual School Needs

Overview and Purpose: Mindfulness-based practices have gained popularity since the introduction of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR; Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Over the years, mindfulness has been used with a variety of psychological disorders, such as anxiety and depression (e.g. Desrosiers, Vine, Klemanski, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2013). Additional research suggests that mindfulness can be used in non-clinical populations to increase psychological well-being (Brown & Ryan, 2003). School-based interventions have shown positive outcomes for elementary-age students, such as decreased depressive symptoms, decreased aggression, greater empathy, and emotional control (Schonert-Reichl, Oberle, Lawlor, Abbott, Thomson, Oberlander, & Diamond, 2015). Kielty, Gillam, Staton, and Curtis (2017) found that classroom-based mindfulness interventions increased the likelihood that children would use mindfulness-based coping strategies (i.e., mindful breathing) when faced with strong feelings. However, schools often report limited time and resources to introduce mindfulness interventions. Thus, brief interventions may be considered for implementation within the schools. Because of the range of applications for mindfulness, the purpose of the current presentation is to present the results of a research study examining a brief (5-minute) intervention of mindfulness. A second goal is to show how the results from the research study can be used to inform school-based mindfulness practice and provide participants with research-based mindfulness strategies that can be easily implemented in schools. Method: Participants were randomly assigned to receive either a mindfulness intervention, ruminative intervention, or no intervention. Interventions were adapted from Huffziger and Kuehner (2009) and Lyubomirsky, Kasri, and Zehm (2003). Participants were presented a series of 20 statements to read at their own pace, for five minutes. Statements were designed for the induction of a cognitive state, which was either ruminative or mindful in nature. All participants completed a stress-induction, which increased self-reported arousal. Baseline arousal was then compared to arousal levels after the brief intervention period. Results: To determine if mindfulness and rumination interventions differentially effected emotion regulation, state affect was compared between T1 (pre-stress induction), T2 (post-stress induction), and T3 (post-mindful/rumination intervention). A repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted for the measure of arousal to compare the effect of the interventions. Change in arousal was significantly influenced by intervention group (i.e. mindfulness or rumination), F (2, 63) = 3.92, p \u3c 0.03. Results also revealed that participants who received the mindfulness intervention reported a decrease in arousal from T2 (post-stress induction) to T3 (post-intervention), with an effect size of d = -1.16. The difference in effect size on arousal between the mindfulness intervention and the rumination intervention indicated that mindfulness is more effective at reducing arousal levels. Results suggest that the mindfulness intervention group had a larger effect on change in arousal, and that mindfulness-based interventions are useful to reduce strong emotions. This presentation will highlight the implication of these results for the implementation of effective school-based mindfulness interventions and how these interventions can help reduce arousal levels and promote emotional regulation in school-age children. Additional resources will also be provided to accommodate mindfulness interventions to the specific needs of a school