Peer-directed, brief mindfulness training with adolescents: A pilot study.

Abstract

Mindfulness is defined as being fully aware of your immediate present experience and accepting yourself as you are in this moment without judgment. Rooted in ancient Buddhist spiritual practices, the techniques and philosophy of mindfulness were first introduced to the field of mental health in 1979 and it has become a widely accepted method in the fields of psychotherapy and wellness. Mindfulness is useful for the treatment of a variety of mental disorders as well as for relief from normal life stressors and for promoting positive self-acceptance (Carmody & Baer, 2008, 2009; Segal, Williams & Teas dale, 2002). Yet, for all its success, the application of mindfulness to adolescents is a relatively new development. As explained by Apsche and Jennings (2013), it is necessary to modify mindfulness training with youth to accommodate their differing developmental needs and interests. First, and most importantly, training and practice exercises use a lot of guided imagery. Secondly, it is recommended to make mindfulness more fun and engaging by offering a variety of mindfulness exercises and activities that have an innate appeal to youth, such as sports, nature, adventure, and discovery. Third, compared to adults, it is helpful to reduce the didactic class time and the time spent doing the mindfulness exercises. Whereas adults are often expected to sit for 2.5 hours in a typical mindfulness training class, this pilot program was delivered in 50-minute sessions. Finally, to better accommodate the differing learning styles and preferences of individual teens, it is helpful to offer multiple pathways for learning mindfulness skills. Typically, adult programs for mindfulness training require about eight weeks (Sass, Berenbaum & Abrams, 2013). Two notable program examples are Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR, Kabat-Zimm, 1990) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (Segal, et al., 2002). Given the prohibitive time demands of attending an eight week program (e.g., MBSR entails one 6 hour class and eight 2.5 hour classes), other researchers have attempted mindfulness interventions that require fewer class hours and/or a shorter period of time to complete. For example, one study reduced the MBSR mindfulness training model to four sessions in four weeks (Mackenzie, Poulin & Seidman-Carlson, 2006); another conducted six 1-hour sessions in six weeks (Klatt, Buckworth, & Malarkey, 2009) and a third delivered four 1.5 hour sessions (Jain, Shapiro, Swanick, Roesch, Mills, Bell and Schwartz, 2007). In fact, a recent review showed no evidence that shortened versions of MBSR were any less effective than longer formats (Carmondy & Baer, 2009). The present pilot study was designed to assess the effectiveness of both (1) mindfulness training with adolescents and (2) brief mindfulness training. In this instance, the present study delivered four 50-minute sessions within a three week period. * METHOD Participants A total of five male and three female adolescents, aged 17 to 18 years, participated in the pilot study. The peer facilitator and all subjects were European American high school seniors with no prior experience with meditation and mindfulness. The subjects volunteered to participate for the purposes of the peer facilitator's high school senior graduation project and were willing to commit to four sessions in a three week time period. Measures The Beck Anxiety Inventory (Beck, et al., 1988) and the Interaction Anxiousness Scale (Leary, 1983) were used to establish baseline (pre-treatment) measures of anxiety and were repeated at the completion of the fourth session of mindfulness training. Subjects completed the inventories anonymously. The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) is a commonly used self-report inventory of anxiety symptoms. The BAI originally conceived of anxiety as comprising two components of cognitive and physiological symptoms (Beck, et al. …