Promoting Inner Strength: Effectiveness and Feasibility of a Mindfulness Program for Urban Teens

• In Event: Health promotion interventions involving children and adolescents: what works, for whom, and under which circumstances ?

Abstract

The promotion of adolescent emotional health has become a significant educational and societal goal in the United States. Recent reports indicate that teen rates of anxiety and depression have increased significantly over the last decade (Bitsko et al., 2018), and suggest that nearly one in five adolescents has a diagnosable mental health disorder (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). Unfortunately, adolescents are also reporting increased levels of stress, and many admit that are unsure of how to manage these school and social stressors (American Psychological Society, 2014). Although mindfulness-based intervention is a promising approach for reducing student stress and promoting social-emotional competencies, there is great variability across programs and limited feedback from students regarding their experiences (Felver et al., 2016; Perry-Parrish et al., 2016). The goal of the present study was to examine the effectiveness and acceptability of a structured, curriculum-based mindfulness program for urban high school students. In particular, we were interested in identifying change across key mechanisms associated with mindfulness, including self-compassion, rumination, and success orientation, and capturing students’ perception of the program.
The participants included 390 students (52.3% female, 45.1% male, 1.3% non-binary; mean age = 15.74; SD = .62) who were recruited from three high schools in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The students were ethnically diverse (37.7% Black; 35.4% Asian; 25.4% White; 9.0% Hispanic; 2.8 % American Indian; 4.1% other) and were in grades 10 (36.2%) and 11 (63.8%). All students participated in a 12-week school-based mindfulness intervention, the Teen Inner Strength Program. The program was administered by trained Inner Strength instructors who visited the classroom once a week for 45 minutes during the regular school day.
Students completed two waves of brief assessments via Survey Monkey, once before the start of the intervention (pretest) and again within two weeks of program completion (posttest). The survey assessed the following three constructs: 1) self-compassion via the Self-Compassion Scale – Short Form (SCS-SF; Raes, Pommier, Neff, & Van Gucht, 2011), 2) rumination using the rumination subscale of the Rumination-Reflection Questionnaire (RRQ; Trapnell, & Campbell, 1999), and success orientation using the Success Orientation Scale (Webber & Smokowski, 2018). In addition, students’ perceptions of the program were captured by both closed- and open-ended questions; only the closed-ended data are reported here.
The effect of the program was examined using paired sample t-tests. The results indicate that students demonstrated significant increases in self-compassion and decreases in rumination (Table 1). These findings are promising in that rumination is associated with anxiety and depression among adolescents (Royuela-Colomer & Calvete, 2016) and self-compassion is a key social-emotional construct for resilience among at-risk youth (Bluth & Blanton, 2014). Although there were no significant changes in success orientation, students were able to maintain their level of this construct across the semester. The results also suggest that the students identified benefits associated primarily with managing stress and increasing focus. These findings are important for future curriculum revisions, as they inform areas for program improvement.

Authors

• Rachel A Razza, Syracuse University
  Presenting Author

• Caitlin S. Smith, Syracuse University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anuoluwapo Omole, Syracuse University
  Non-Presenting Author