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

R Amundsen,D Mcgann,C Hamilton,M Hope,L M Riby

doi:10.1186/s40359-020-00428-y

Abstract

BackgroundMindfulness 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.MethodsBuilding 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.ResultsReliable 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.ConclusionsTaken 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.

Highlights

Mindfulness programmes as a potential avenue of enhancing pupil wellbeing are beginning to show great promise
The wellbeing findings are in agreement with previous studies which have reported the association between positive emotional states and mindfulness [28, 52]
The results build upon findings from a non-controlled study which found a school-based mindfulness programme may lead to improvements in wellbeing as measured by the Sterling Children’s wellbeing scale (SCWBS) [37]

Summary

Introduction

Mindfulness programmes as a potential avenue of enhancing pupil wellbeing are beginning to show great promise. Important to this study, wellbeing has been intrinsically linked to emotion regulation [4]. With this in mind, mindfulness meditation may be a vehicle for facilitating emotion regulation [5]. With mental health across schools in the UK being a priority [6], there is a drive to employ evidence based interventions which aim to promote pupil wellbeing. A handful of studies, see [7] for review, have suggested school based mindfulness training may enhance pupil wellbeing and even fewer studies have explored the mechanisms by which mindfulness may work. This study endeavours to examine the impact of a mindfulness training programme on primary aged children’s subjective and psychological wellbeing and emotion regulation

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Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion