Mindfulness shapes emotion regulation in non-clinical adolescents: Secondary outcomes of a randomized controlled trial
- PMID: 40991425
- DOI: 10.1177/13591045251377898
Mindfulness shapes emotion regulation in non-clinical adolescents: Secondary outcomes of a randomized controlled trial
Abstract
Adolescence, characterized by both remarkable brain plasticity and vulnerability to psychiatric disorders; represents a uniquely propitious time window for targeted early interventions. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) have garnered increasing interest as cost-efficient, non-invasive and non-pharmacological approaches to enhancing mental health. While solid evidence supports the mental health benefits of MBI in adults, results in adolescents remain mixed. In particular, there is contradictory evidence regarding the use of MBI for healthy adolescents, underscoring the need for further research on its underlying mechanisms. One emerging mechanism mediating the beneficial effects of MBI is improved emotion regulation. Indeed, impaired emotion regulation is increasingly recognized as an early and transdiagnostic marker for psychiatric disorders. Therefore, we aimed to examine the impact of MBI on emotion regulation (ER) strategy use in healthy young adolescents. This study is a two-arm, wait-list, randomized controlled trial (RCT) of an 8-week MBI involving 70 adolescents from a non-clinical sample, aged 13 to 15. This study reports secondary outcomes on the impact of the MBI on emotion regulation strategy (ERS) use during a naturalistic task of emotion reactivity and regulation. Post-hoc t-tests on a multilevel logistic regression model (GLMM) revealed a significant decrease in the use of acceptance and problem solving, and a highly significant increase in the use of relaxation in adolescents' emotion regulation strategies after the MBI, compared to the wait-list controls. Despite the limited sample size, these secondary results of the study point to the effectiveness of MBI in improving emotion regulation strategies in adolescents from the general population, paving the way to future wider-scale research into specific mechanisms of action and into the clinical relevance of MBI in adolescents. Shedding light on these points is pivotal for validating MBI as a potential early intervention aimed at improving mental health and reducing the risk of psychiatric disorders in adolescents.
Keywords: Mindfulness; adolescents; early intervention; emotion regulation; non-clinical; randomized controlled trial.
Plain language summary
Adolescence is a time when the brain is changing a lot, and young people are more likely to develop mental health problems. Finding ways to help teens manage their emotions early on is very important. One way to do this is through mindfulness-based interventions (MBI). These are simple, low-cost exercises that help people pay attention to the present moment and handle stress better. While mindfulness has been shown to help adults feel better mentally, it is not yet clear how well it works for teenagers, especially those who do not have any diagnosed mental health problems. This study, called the Mindfulteen Study, looked at 70 healthy adolescents aged 13 to 15. The teens were split into two groups, with one group taking part in an 8-week mindfulness program, and the other group waiting to do the program later. The study focused on how the mindfulness program affected the ways teens manage their emotions during everyday situations. After the program, teens who did mindfulness used fewer strategies like acceptance and problem-solving but used relaxation much more often to cope with their feelings. This suggests that mindfulness training helped them find new, effective ways to handle their emotions. Although the number of participants was small, the results are promising. They show that mindfulness could be a useful tool to improve emotional health in teenagers before any problems develop. More research with larger groups is needed to confirm these findings and to see if mindfulness could become a common early approach to support teen mental health.
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