“Scaling Out” a Mindfulness-Based Intervention Through a Youth Mentoring Program: Preliminary Evidence for Feasibility, Acceptability, and Efficacy

Abstract

Objectives

Past studies indicate that mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) promote mental health for adolescents. However, most adolescents with mental health vulnerabilities do not have access to an MBI. The goal of the current study was to explore the feasibility, acceptability, and potential efficacy of scaling out an MBI through a mentoring program targeted at adolescents experiencing multiple adversities.

Method

We conducted a randomized feasibility trial comparing mentoring alone to mentoring plus MBI. Assessments occurred at baseline and post-intervention, including reports gathered from adolescents and their parents.

Results

The addition of an MBI to the mentoring program did not affect attendance, but was associated with small increases in overall program acceptability. Additionally, adolescents who received mentoring plus MBI showed larger improvements in two aspects of emotion regulation (emotional clarity and managing impulsive behaviors during distress), attention problems, externalizing behaviors, and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. In contrast, adolescents who received mentoring alone demonstrated more favorable change in another dimension of emotion regulation (accessing effective emotion regulation strategies) and internalizing symptoms. Many but not all of these effects were more pronounced when focusing specifically on older, high school–aged adolescents, compared to the effects observed in the entire sample of 10–18-year-olds.

Conclusions

Results suggest that it is feasible, acceptable, and potentially effective to expand MBI via mentoring programs for adolescents at high risk for mental health symptoms.

Preregistration

This study was not preregistered.