Mindfulness in primary school children as a route to enhanced life satisfaction, positive outlook and effective emotion regulation

Abstract

Background Mindfulness programmes as a potential avenue of enhancing pupil wellbeing are beginning to show great promise. However, research concerning the effectiveness of mindfulness training for primary aged school children (7–11 years of age) has been neglected. Methods Building on methodological limitations of prior research, this study employed an active controlled design to assess the longer term wellbeing and emotion regulation outcomes after a 6 week mindfulness programme ( Living Mindfully Programme, UK ), for a group of school children aged between 9 and 10. The programme was delivered by class teachers as part of their normal curriculum entitlement. One hundred and eight children took part from across three schools in North East of England. Participants formed a treatment group ( n = 64), active control ( n = 19) and wait list control ( n = 25). Self-report measures of wellbeing, mindfulness and emotion regulation were collected at pre and post training as well as at 3 months follow up. Results Reliable findings, judged by medium to large effect sizes across both post intervention, follow-up and between both controls, demonstrated enhancement in a number of domains. Immediately after training and follow up, when compared with the wait list control, children who received mindfulness training showed significant improvements in mindfulness ( d = .76 and .77), Positive Outlook ( d = .55 and .64) and Life Satisfaction ( d = .65 and 0.72). Even when compared to an active control, the effects remained although diminished reflecting the positive impact of the active control condition. Furthermore, a significant positive relationship was found between changes in mindfulness and changes in cognitive reappraisal. Conclusions Taken together, this study provides preliminary evidence that the Living Mindfully Primary Programme is feasibly delivered by school staff, enjoyed by the children and may significantly improve particular components of wellbeing. Importantly, higher levels of mindfulness as a result of training may be related to effective emotional regulatory and cognitive reappraisal strategies.

How Mindfulness Affects Life Satisfaction: Based on the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory

“…Mindfulness is defined as the attention and awareness of the current experiences, characterized by non-critical observation and experience of current experience ( Brown and Ryan, 2003 ; Brown et al, 2007 ). Generally speaking, the present studies can be divided into experimental and observational methods: for one thing, mindfulness based on intervention had a noteworthy impact on life satisfaction ( Harnett et al, 2010 ; Henriksson et al, 2016 ; Lötzke et al, 2016 ; Chandrasekara, 2018 ; Amundsen et al, 2020 ; Gupta and Verma, 2020 ); for another thing, individuals with trait mindfulness tended to have higher scores of life satisfaction. Moreover, existing research has preliminarily expanded the path between mindfulness and life satisfaction.…”

Correlations between smartphone addiction and alexithymia, attachment style, and subjective well-being: A meta-analysis

“…At the same time, researchers should further develop effective strategies (e.g., mindfulness), starting with individual emotional training, so that individuals can master emotional types, understand emotional characteristics, and alleviate the negative effects of alexithymia on SA by enhancing their ability to identify and describe emotions ( Gao T. et al, 2018 ; Li and Hao, 2019 ). In addition, most studies have shown that mindfulness can significantly improve subjective well-being and life satisfaction, enhance positive emotions, and reduce negative emotions ( Shapiro et al, 2007 ; Kieviet-Stijnen et al, 2008 ; Amundsen et al, 2020 ). In addition, researchers can use psychological counseling and treatment programs such as group therapy ( Yuchang et al, 2017 ) to focus on attachment construction and help smartphone addicts establish healthy attachment relationships and secure attachment styles.…”

School educational models and child mental health among K-12 students: a scoping review

“…However, four programs reported non-significant effects of SEL on student mental health outcomes [ 44 – 47 ], while two programs demonstrated increased levels of anxiety [ 48 ] and a reduction of subjective well-being [ 49 ] at post-intervention. Mindfulness-based curriculum showed its potential to endorse positive outcomes for youth including reduced emotional problems and negative affect [ 50 – 56 ] as well as increased well-being and positive emotions [ 51 , 52 , 57 – 60 ], especially among high-risk children with emotional problems or perceived stress before interventions [ 50 , 53 ]. However, non-significant effects were also reported in an Australian study in secondary schools [ 61 ].…”