A review of the effectiveness of a schools-based mindfulness training programme found it did not help young people’s mental health, but it did improve school culture, though that effect did not last more than a year.
The study also found that the mindfulness programme did not improve wellbeing for students either – and that it might be contraindicated, or seem to make things worse, for students with mental health needs.
A special study programme – MY Resilience In ADolescence (MYRIAD) – spanned eight years of research and sought to explore whether mindfulness training in schools could improve the mental health of young people. The study sought to examine whether a schools-based mindfulness course, where students were taught to pay attention to the present and their immediate thoughts and feelings, could be an effective mental health treatment.
The experts looked at the effectiveness of the course on wellbeing, the risk of depression and its effects on social and emotional behaviour.
More than 28,000 children aged 11-14, were involved as were 100 schools and 650 teachers. The mindfulness courses were delivered to students over 10 weeks, with 30 to 50 lessons in total. The study, from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter, King’s College London, University College London and Pennsylvania State in the US, was was published by the BMJ in a special issue of Evidence-based Mental Health
However, the review found that the course brought about no improvement in mental health problems, and did not improve well being in students.
Moreover, the study found that, in contrast to existing schools mental health initiatives, the mindfulness programme produced “worse scores on risk of depression and well-being” in students who were already at risk of mental health problems, but said the “differences were small and not clinically relevant”.
The authors wrote that the “low-intensity programmes” may raise upsetting feelings for at-risk groups without also teaching the students how to develop resilience.
The study found that slightly more young people rated mindfulness negatively than positively – and that 80% of students failed to complete “mindfulness homework”.
Data gathered for the study suggests 29 per cent of children aged 11 to 14 are dealing with significant difficulties and are either “languishing” or have mental health problems. The study reported that while school culture can have a small but significant effect on children’s mental health and wellbeing, other aspects such as poverty have a far bigger impact.
The researchers said that some groups were more likely to report mental health problems.
“Reports suggest that one in five teenagers experience mental health problems, and three quarters of all mental illnesses that anyone will ever develop before the age of 24. For example, the peak age of onset of depression is between 13 and 15 years of age. The MYRIAD studies showed that certain groups of young people were more likely to report mental health problems: girls, older teenagers, those living in urban areas, and those living in areas of greatest poverty and deprivation,” they said.
Willem Kuyken, professor of mindfulness and psychological science at the University of Oxford and one of the lead authors, told a briefing that older children appeared to benefit more from mindfulness than younger children while those with existing mental health problems did not benefit.
“We found that the schools-based training, delivered by school teachers in this developmental window of age 11 to 14, did not do better than what schools were already doing in terms of teenager mental health or wellbeing,” he said.
However, Professor Mark Williams, founding director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre and co-investigator at the University of Oxford, told Cambridge Research that, on average, pupils only practised mindfulness once over the 10-week course. “That’s like going to the gym once and hoping you’ll get fit,” he said. “But why didn’t they practise? Many of them found it boring. Those students who did engage, did improve.
Co-investigator Professor Tamsin Ford from the University of Cambridge said:
“Our work adds to the evidence that translating mental health treatments into classroom curricula is difficult and that teachers may not be best placed to deliver them without considerable training and support – another approach would be for mindfulness practitioners to work with students at risk of poor mental health or who express a particular interest in attending mindfulness training.”