The UK Government has for the first time invested public funds to study the benefits of mindfulness in the classroom.
Hundreds of children in the UK will be taught mindfulness among a
range of innovative techniques with the aim of promoting good mental
health, through one of the largest studies of its kind in the world (in terms of participant numbers).
Led by the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families
in partnership with University College London, a series of trials will
see children from up to 370 schools learn mindfulness exercises,
relaxation techniques and breathing exercises which aim to “to help them
regulate their emotions”—alongside pupil sessions with mental health
experts.
The study will extend existing research into mindfulness and mental
health education, comparing the effectiveness of different approaches,
with the aim of establishing a robust evidence-base to help schools
determine how best to promote students’ mental health and well-being.
Announcing the trial at the beginning of Children’s Mental Health Week,
UK Education Secretary Damian Hinds acknowledged plans to introduce
children to issues around mental health, well-being, and happiness from
the beginning of primary school:
“As a society, we are much more open about our mental health than
ever before, but the modern world has brought new pressures for
children… these trials are key to improving our understanding of how
practical, simple advice can help them cope.”
“As a society, we are much more open about our mental health than ever before, but the modern world has brought new pressures for children…”
—Damian Hinds, UK Secretary of State for Health
A Decade of Grassroots Mindfulness Efforts
The Government’s current initiative builds on over a decade of
grassroots work to bring mindfulness to schoolchildren across the UK.
Thanks to independent curriculum innovators and enthusiastic champions
at the school and local authority level, over 5,000 trained classroom
teachers deliver mindfulness training in thousands of schools across the
UK. Successive Secretaries of State for Education have recognized the
potential for mindfulness training to improve well-being, cognitive
skills, and academic performance, but until now they have been hesitant
to put scarce resources behind a national program.
A change in prevailing attitudes has been apparent in the past two
years however, as the mental health and well-being of children has
climbed the political agenda. It has been a regular feature in speeches
by the Prime Minister Theresa May, who recently said,
“I want us to do more to support the mental well-being of young people.
Half of all mental illness, as we know, begins by the age of 14—and
with young people spending more time online, the strains on mental
well-being are only going to increase.”
An Education Minister, Edward Timpson MP, responded to a
parliamentary debate on mindfulness in education, attributing his own
on-going interest in mindfulness to its particular benefits to
attention, which he identified as a developing problem in schools.
Investing in Resilience Training
Addressing members of the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group, Professor Katherine Weare, co-lead for education at The Mindfulness Initiative policy institute,
recently summarized current evidence for mindfulness in education. Her
systematic review found that mindfulness-based interventions in the
classroom “can reliably impact on a wide range of indicators of positive
psychological, social, and physical well-being and flourishing in
children and young people.” The current, promising state of the evidence
base has been sufficient to attract a 10 million dollar Strategic Award
from the Welcome Trust for a research trial led by Universities of
Oxford, Cambridge and UCL. The My Resilience In Adolescence (MYRIAD)
project focuses on the comparative value of mindfulness-based
interventions to support resilience and well-being in young people,
through a five-year randomized control trial.
Systematic review found that mindfulness-based interventions in the classroom “can reliably impact on a wide range of indicators of positive psychological, social, and physical well-being and flourishing in children and young people.”
Amid criticism that the Government’s new initiative focuses on
intervention rather than prevention of mental health problems, Dr.
Jessica Deighton argued that the new study focuses on long-term
resilience and literacy in mental health—saying “it’s not just to make
(young people) feel better in the short-term, but to better equip them
for later in life.” Whether or not the Government’s current trial proves
successful, it is vital that such future-forward initiatives are
encouraged, so long as they are objectively evaluated. Skills such as
focus and collectedness, and attitudes like kindness and open-mindedness
may well be imperative in helping us all to meet the challenges we face
in our rapidly changing world. These developments come at a time when
scientists are beginning to consider mindfulness as a root construct—something
‘critical to how and what one values, thinks, feels, and does in all
social domains.’ Some politicians are likewise starting to ask whether
it could have a fundamental role in policymaking. Educators are not out
on a limb then, in asking whether mindfulness belongs within a
foundational approach to our health and well-being as we learn and grow.
Indeed we might next move away from the model of mindfulness as an
‘intervention’—treating it rather as a trainable human capacity that has
an indispensable role in flourishing.
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