School-based mindfulness trainings (SBMT) are a contemporary approach for intervening to promote students' social and emotional skills and well-being. Despite evidence from the larger field of evidence-based social and emotional learning programs demonstrating the importance of high-quality implementation, few studies have investigated factors impacting the implementation of SBMTs, particularly teacher-level influences. The present study addressed this issue by investigating whether teachers' stress, trust in their fellow teachers and principal, and expectations about the program at baseline predicted the quality of their implementation of a SBMT for students.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Both transactional and common etiological models have been proposed as explanations of why externalizing behavior problems (EBP) and internalizing behavior problems (IBP) co-occur in children. Yet little research has empirically evaluated these competing theoretical explanations. We examined whether EBP and IBP are transactionally related at the within-child level while also identifying antecedents commonly associated with between-child differences in underlying stability of both EBP and IBP across elementary school.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
February 2024
Objective: Adolescence is a key developmental window that may determine long-term mental health. As schools may influence mental health of students, this study aimed to examine the association of school-level characteristics with students' mental health over time.
Method: Longitudinal data from a cluster randomized controlled trial comprising 8,376 students (55% female; aged 11-14 years at baseline) across 84 schools in the United Kingdom were analyzed.
Importance: As young people's mental health difficulties increase, understanding risk and resilience factors under challenging circumstances becomes critical.
Objective: To explore the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic on secondary school students' mental health difficulties, as well as the associations with individual, family, friendship, and school characteristics.
Design, Setting, And Participants: For this cohort study, follow-up data from the My Resilience in Adolescence (MYRIAD) cluster randomized clinical trial were collected across 2 representative UK cohorts.
The present study examined the impact of the CASEL School Guide, an innovative model of implementation support for systemic SEL, on the social, emotional, and academic development of elementary grade students in schools implementing the evidence-based PATHS® Program. The study tested a 2-year intervention model in a cluster randomized design with 28 low-performing, urban, high-poverty elementary schools. We expected that the School Guide model of support would promote greater fidelity of PATHS implementation by teachers and improvement in students' social-emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes compared to schools delivering PATHS with the standard model of support.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: We explored what predicts secondary school students' mindfulness practice and responsiveness to universal school-based mindfulness training (SBMT), and how students experience SBMT.
Method: A mixed-methods design was used. Participants were 4,232 students (11-13 years of age), in 43 UK secondary schools, who received universal SBMT (ie, ".
Objectives: Significant concerns have been raised about the "mental health crisis" on college campuses, with attention turning to what colleges can do beyond counseling services to address students' mental health and well-being. We examined whether primarily first-year (89.1%) undergraduate students (651) who enrolled in the Art and Science of Human Flourishing (ASHF), a novel academic and experiential for-credit elective course on human flourishing, would demonstrate improved mental health and strengthen skills, perspectives, and behaviors associated with flourishing relative to students who did not enroll in this course.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Preventing mental health problems in early adolescence is a priority. School-based mindfulness training (SBMT) is an approach with mixed evidence.
Objectives: To explore for whom SBMT does/does not work and what influences outcomes.
Background: Systematic reviews suggest school-based mindfulness training (SBMT) shows promise in promoting student mental health.
Objective: The My Resilience in Adolescence (MYRIAD) Trial evaluated the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of SBMT compared with teaching-as-usual (TAU).
Methods: MYRIAD was a parallel group, cluster-randomised controlled trial.
Background: Education is broader than academic teaching. It includes teaching students social-emotional skills both directly and indirectly through a positive school climate.
Objective: To evaluate if a universal school-based mindfulness training (SBMT) enhances teacher mental health and school climate.
There are fewer evidence-based social and emotional learning programs for middle school students compared to younger grades. This randomized controlled trial tests the effectiveness of Facing History and Ourselves (hereafter, Facing History) with a sample of 694 (Facing History n = 437; Comparison n = 257) students from a low-resourced school district. Youth self-identified as female (59%), Black/African American (61%), Hispanic/Latinx (18%), White (2%), and multi-racial or some other race/ethnicity (19%).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study evaluated emerging adult effects of the PROmoting School-Community-University Partnerships to Enhance Resilience (PROSPER) universal prevention delivery system implemented in middle schools. Twenty-eight rural school districts were randomized to intervention and control conditions, with 1985 nineteen-year-old participants (90.6% White, 54.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMindfulness training (MT) is considered appropriate for school teachers and enhances well-being. Most research has investigated the efficacy of instructor-led MT. However, little is known about the benefits of using self-taught formats, nor what the key mechanisms of change are that contribute to enhanced teacher well-being.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: This study explores whether variability in the implementation of an undergraduate course on human flourishing is differentially associated with student outcomes.
Participants: 101 students in the "Art and Science of Human Flourishing" course across three large, public, R1 universities in Fall 2018 participated in the study.
Methods: Formative course data included researcher observations of weekly class pedagogy, students' weekly meditation practice logs and end-of-course assessments, and pre/post surveys measuring changes in participating students' outcomes related to flourishing (e.
Background: MYRIAD (My Resilience in Adolescence) is a superiority, parallel group, cluster randomised controlled trial designed to examine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a mindfulness training (MT) programme, compared with normal social and emotional learning (SEL) school provision to enhance mental health, social-emotional-behavioural functioning and well-being in adolescence. The original trial protocol was published in Trials (accessible at https://doi.org/10.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Mindful parenting and parenting cognitions likely have important linkages to each other and to parent-child communication, but these linkages have not been tested. In this article, we test the bidirectional linkages between mindful parenting and parenting cognitions (sense of competence, parent-centered attributions) and the underlying mediational processes that link them to parent-child communication (parental solicitation and youth disclosure).
Methods: Longitudinal, autoregressive cross-lagged models were run within a longitudinal sample of rural and suburban early adolescents and their mothers ( = 421; mean adolescent age = 12.
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
December 2021
Objective: Recent studies suggest mental health in youths is deteriorating. The current policy in the United Kingdom emphasizes the role of schools for mental health promotion and prevention, but little data exist on what aspects of schools influence mental health in pupils. This study explored school-level influences on the mental health of young people in a large school-based sample from the United Kingdom.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Mindfulness training has been shown to reduce rates of depression, anxiety and perceived stress, but its impact on stress and emotion regulation in real-world settings in the college-aged population is unknown. This study examines the effect of an 8-session long mindfulness training on first-year college students' daily experiences of stress and emotion regulation.
Methods: Fifty-two first-year students were randomized to the mindfulness training or the waitlist-control group during the fall academic semester.
Social and emotional learning (SEL) has become more central to education because of demand from educators, parents, students, and business leaders alongside rigorous research showing broad, positive impacts for students and adults. However, all approaches to SEL are not equal. Systemic SEL is an approach to create equitable learning conditions that actively involve all Pre-K to Grade 12 students in learning and practicing social, emotional, and academic competencies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExternalizing and internalizing behavior problems are known to often co-occur, but mechanisms underlying this co-occurrence remain unclear: whether the associations are due to causal influences of one domain on the other or due to common risk processes influencing both domains. This study aimed to better understand the sources of co-occurring behavior problems by disentangling within- and between-child levels of associations between the two across the five years of childhood, from pre-kindergarten to Grade 3. We analyzed a longitudinal sample of 1060 children from non-urban settings in the U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study examined a comprehensive set of individual and organizational factors as potential predictors of how the Promoting Alternative THinking (PATHS) Curriculum was implemented by teachers in an urban Midwestern school district. The study used data from a randomized trial of an implementation support model conducted in 28 urban elementary schools. All schools implemented PATHS in grades K-3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study examines crossover effects of adolescent substance misuse preventive interventions on academic success in college. It evaluates pathways of influence on college grades, via effects on school engagement, problem-solving skills, and substance misuse in high school. Data were collected as part of an Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) evaluating a multicomponent intervention conducted in 28 school districts with middle school students.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study examined unfolding relations among mothers' mindful parenting, parent-adolescent recurrent conflict, and adolescents' externalizing and internalizing problems. In a community sample of 117 families (31% black, Asian, American Indian, or Latino), parents and adolescents (52% female; average age = 12.13 years) were followed over 15 months.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFYouth substance use remains a significant public health issue. Although there are numerous evidence-based substance use preventive interventions, room for program improvement remains. Mindfulness practice, due to its feasibility of implementation, capacity to promote neuro-networks associated with delayed substance use initiation and progression to substance use disorders, and efficacy in promoting protective and reducing risk factors associated with substance use, may constitute one strategy for increasing the effectiveness of substance use preventive interventions.
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