The Science and the So What? #4
Finally a Long-Term Study of Mindfulness Interventions in Schools, and the News Isn’t Good
Marcy Crawford and Louis Wilde, Ph.D.
The Science
A good deal of research has been published on the benefits of meditation to school children. However the scientific quality of this research has been criticized for such issues as small sample sizes, inadequate controls, and lack of follow up. Recently a unique, large-scale study in the United Kingdom compared the on-going effectiveness of school-based mindfulness training to standard social-emotional teaching (Kuyken, et al., 2022).
The mindfulness intervention in this study used a combination of “psychoeducation, class discussion and brief mindfulness practices,” adapted from mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, and presented in ten manualised, structured lessons (typically 30–50 minutes each), normally delivered over one school term.
The study included 8376 participants from 84 schools. Participant-level risk for depression, social-emotional-behavioral functioning, and well-being after one year were the co-primary outcomes. The study found no evidence that school-based mindfulness training was superior to standard social-emotional teaching at one year.
The So What?
The lack of scientifically significant differences in the measured outcomes between mindfulness training and social-emotional teaching is hardly a surprise. The mindfulness intervention in this study relied on ten manualised, structured lessons adapted from mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, taught over a school term by school teachers. Our own experience shows that such interventions are unlikely to produce significant benefits for young school children. One cannot expect minor adjustments on an approach developed for adults to work for children. In this case however, as described in the study protocol (Kuyken, et al. 2017), the intervention program was in development for five years and included “explicitly teaching skills and attitudes; tailoring components and approaches to the needs of young people; using a range of age-appropriate, interactive, experiential and lively teaching methods.” That it still did not produce measurable results after a year suggests that what is needed is a more dramatic paradigm shift.
Kuyken W., S. Ball, C. Crane, et al., “Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of universal school-based mindfulness training compared with normal school provision in reducing risk of mental health problems and promoting well-being in adolescence: the MYRIAD cluster randomised controlled trial,” Evid Based Ment Health, 2022;25:99–109. doi:10.1136/ebmental-2021-300396
Kuyken, W., E. Nuthall, S. Byford, et al., The effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a mindfulness training programme in schools compared with normal school provision (MYRIAD): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial, Trials (2017) 18:194. DOI 10.1186/s13063-017-1917-4