Mindfulness in schools reduces depressive symptoms in adolescents

High school students who completed a program of Mindfulness reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress up to six months after the end of the program. Not only did they reduce them, but they were less likely to develop such symptoms. The study was led by Professor Filip Raes, from the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). The teacher is the first to examine Mindfulness in a large sample of adolescents in an environment such as school.

Mindfulness is a form of meditation focused on the exercise of attention. Depression is often rooted in a spiral of negative feelings and worries. Once a person learns to recognize these feelings and thoughts more quickly, he or she can intervene before depression occurs.

While Mindfulness has been widely tested and applied in patients with depression, this is the first time that this method has been studied in a group of adolescents in a school-based setting. The study was carried out in five secondary schools in Flanders, Belgium. Around 400 students between the ages of 13 and 20 took part in the study. The students were divided into a test group and a control group. The test group received this Mindfulness program and the control group received no training. Before the study, both groups completed a questionnaire to detect and measure symptoms of depression, stress, or anxiety. Both groups filled out the questionnaire again right after training, and then a third time six months later.

Before the start of the program, both the test group (21%) and the control group (24%) had a similar percentage of students with depressive symptoms. After the application of the Mindfulness program, that number was significantly lower in the test group: 15% versus 27% in the control group. This difference was maintained six months after training: 16% of the test group versus 31% of the control group.

The results suggest that mindfulness can lead to a decrease in symptoms associated with depression and, on the other hand, that it protects it against the later development of symptoms related to depression.

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