Browsing by Subject "Mindfulness"

Objective. The aim of this literature review was to research whether mindfulness-based methods are related to stress reduction among students. Mindfulness, in other words the ability to be fully present in the moment, has been found to have many neurobiological, psychological and physiological effects on human health. Stress is linked to students' health in many ways and it is important to find effective ways to manage stress already while studying to prevent the negative sides of stress. In previous studies, stress has been reduced with mindfulness training. Methods. Research on mindfulness and students’ stress was searched in PubMed and Google Scholar with the keywords mindfulness, student and stress. Recent studies were searched between the years 2018 and 2019. Articles were also manually searched through the bibliographies of already selected articles. A total of six research articles were selected for the review, three of them using a mindfulness-based phone application and three of them using a traditional mindfulness course. Results and conclusions. The results between students’ stress and mindfulness exercises were ambiguous. In half of the studies, those who practiced mindfulness were less stressed after the intervention than those who were non-practitioners, and the results remained in follow-up. In half of the studies, mindfulness practitioners were as stressed after the intervention as non-practitioners. However, the latter studies give some hope for the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions among students. They found, among other results, that an improvement on the aspects of mindfulness was associated with less stress and stress decreased after mindfulness intervention in women but not in men. In one study they also found a slight decrease in stress among mindfulness practitioners. Mindfulness is a potential tool for students’ stress management, especially for students who are motivated to learn mindfulness and are ready to engage in regular practice.

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.