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Abstract
Background Previous research suggests that mindfulness training (MT) appears effective at improving mental health in young people. MT is proposed to work through improving executive control in affectively laden contexts. However, it is unclear whether MT improves such control in young people. MT appears to mitigate mental health difficulties during periods of stress, but any mitigating effects against COVID-related difficulties remain unexamined.
Objective To evaluate whether MT (intervention) versus psychoeducation (Psy-Ed; control), implemented in after-school classes: (1) Improves affective executive control; and/or (2) Mitigates negative mental health impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods A parallel randomised controlled trial (RCT) was conducted (Registration: https://osf.io/d6y9q/; Funding: Wellcome (WT104908/Z/14/Z, WT107496/Z/15/Z)). 460 students aged 11-16 years were recruited and randomised 1:1 to either MT (N=235) or Psy-Ed (N=225) and assessed preintervention and postintervention on experimental tasks and self-report inventories of affective executive control. The RCT was then extended to evaluate protective functions of MT on mental health assessed after the first UK COVID-19 lockdown.
Findings Results provided no evidence that the version of MT used here improved affective executive control after training or mitigated negative consequences on mental health of the COVID-19 pandemic relative to Psy-Ed. No adverse events were reported.
Conclusions There is no evidence that MT improves affective control or downstream mental health of young people during stressful periods.
Clinical implications We need to identify interventions that can enhance affective control and thereby young people’s mental health.
- child & adolescent psychiatry
Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request. The data and codebook for the MYRIAD Trial are available from the corresponding author upon request (release of data is subject to an approved proposal and a signed data access agreement).
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request. The data and codebook for the MYRIAD Trial are available from the corresponding author upon request (release of data is subject to an approved proposal and a signed data access agreement).
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Footnotes
S-JB and TD are joint senior authors.
Twitter @MarisVainre
Collaborators The MYRIAD Team Group Authorship comprises Katie Fletcher, Lucy Konstantina Komninidou, Rachel Knight, Suzannah Laws, Elise Sellars, Lucy Warriner and Brian Wainman. These individuals have worked across the MYRIAD strategic award ‘Promoting Mental Health and Building Resilience in Adolescence: Investigating Mindfulness and Attentional Control’, they are acknowledged as group authors for their contributions to the project in accordance with the MYRIAD Dissemination Protocol. The authors would also like to acknowledge the wider MYRIAD Team for their contribution to this work: The additional MYRIAD research team at the University of Oxford: Ruth Baer, Daniel Brett, Eleanor-Rose Farley, Triona Casey, Nicola Dalrymple, Katherine De Wilde, Katie Fletcher, Jennifer Harper, Verena Hinze, Nils Kapplemann, Maria Kempnich, Konstantina Komnindou, Suzannah Laws, Liz Lord, Emma Medlicott, Lucy Palmer, Ariane Petit, Alice Phillips, Isobel Pryor-Nitsch, Lucy Radley, Anam Raja, Elsie Sellars, Jem Shackleford, Anna Sonley, Laura Taylor, Alice Tickell, and Lucy Warriner.Additional MYRIAD Co-Investigators: Sarah Byford (KCL), Mark Greenberg (Penn State), Tamsin Ford (Cambridge), Susan Gathercole (MRC CBU), Russell Viner (UCH), Phil Zelazo (Minnesota) Additional Cambridge, UCL, KCL and Exeter research team: Rachel Knight, Blanca Piera Pi-Sunyer, Kirsten Thomas, Susan Ball, Ben Jones, Poushali Ganguli.We are grateful to the members of the Scientific Advisory Board for the programme as a whole (Nick Allen, Susan Bogels, Pim Cuijpers, Celene Domitrovich, Uta Frith (Chair), Terrie Moffitt, Vikram Patel).
Contributors WK, JMGW, TD, OCU, TF and S-JB were responsible for the original proposal and securing funding for the trial. TD, DD and OCU have verified the underlying data. TD and S-JB had overall responsibility for the management of the study and are study guarantors. Authors are members of the study team who made a major scientific, pragmatic and/or strategic contribution. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding This research was funded by Wellcome (WT104908/Z/14/Z and WT107496/Z/15/Z) and supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis or interpretation nor in writing the paper. The corresponding author had full access to all the data in the study and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication. Obi Ukoumunne was supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South West Peninsula. JM-M has a “Miguel Servet” research contract from the ISCIII (CP21/00080). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the funders.
Competing interests WK is the Director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre and receives royalties for several books on mindfulness. JMGW is former Director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre and receives royalties for several books on mindfulness.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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