School-based Mindfulness Programs for Children and Adolescents

Mindfulness is a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's bodily sensations, sensory feedback, thoughts, and feelings. Mindfulness interventions can improve proprioception, direction of attention, and emotion regulation. An accepting attitude towards thoughts and feelings reduces the experience of stress so that it is easier to cope with stressful situations. The regular practice of mindfulness exercises affects neurobiological mechanisms, which can lead to an improvement of executive functions as well as psychological health. Metaanalyses provide evidence of small effects of mindfulness interventions in schools, both in cognitive areas (executive functions, concentration, memory) and in emotional areas (anxiety, depressivity, wellbeing). The focus of this review article is on German and English-language mindfulness programmes for children and adolescents in schools, which have already been the subject of initial evaluation studies. This study presents the programmes Paws b, Mind Up, and Mehr Ruhe for children, and .b, Mind Up, AISCHU, and 8sam for adolescents, together with their evaluation results. The conclusion discusses open questions concerning conceptual and methodological issues.