Slow-Breathing Curriculum for Stress Reduction in High School Students: Lessons Learned From a Feasibility Pilot.

Purpose: Nearly one in three US adolescents meet the criteria for anxiety, an issue that has worsened with the COVID-19 pandemic. We developed a video-based slow diaphragmatic breathing stress-reduction curriculum for high school students and evaluated its feasibility, tolerability, and preliminary effectiveness.

Methods: This cluster-randomized feasibility pilot compared 5-min slow diaphragmatic breathing for 5 weeks with treatment-as-usual control among four 12th-grade public high school classes.