Browsing by Author "Holopainen, Marianne"

Objectives: Mindfulness-based interventions hve shown positive effects on adult’s mental health and well-being. In recent times, interest in application of mindfulness-based interventions with adults has increased and spread to developing and studying mindfulness-based approaches with children and youth. However, the research is in its infancy. Objectives of this bachelor degree was to go though mindfulness-based interventions of children and adolescents and review preliminary research base of approaches’ effects on mental health of children and youth, as well as generally well-being of schoolchildren. Methods: The study was an overview of the current research literature. Materials and published articles were collected by the searches of the following electronic data bases: Google Scholar and PubMed. The literature review was examined mindfulness-based interventions of children and youth. Specifically, the concentration was on two methods: Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for children (MBCT-C) and Mindfulness-based stress reduction for teens (MBSR-T). These methods are adaptions for children and youth based on two most popular mindfulness-based interventions of adults. In addition, effects of interventions were reviewed. Results were divided in two: elementary school aged children and high school aged adolescents. Main focuses were on mental health and well-being of school-aged children and adolescents both in clinical and non-clinical school settings. Results and Discussion: Current research results show that mindfulness-based interventions are feasibility and acceptability among children and adolescents. Interventions were well-tolerated by the participants and studies did not report adverse effects. Results were also in line with similar results of adult’s population. Tentatively, research findings showed beneficial effects of mindfulness in different age groups and in clinical and school settings. However, the research field is still in its infancy and many studies had a lot of methodological weaknesses. As a results of empirical evidence, the final general conclusion cannot be made of interventions’ efficacy and effects.