Mindfulness-Based Intervention for Adolescents

Summary

The Mindfulteen Study is a 3-year long longitudinal cohort study with a nested randomized controlled trial, integrating neuroimaging, biological and clinical outcomes, and designed to evaluate the impact of a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) on young adolescents.

Young adolescents between 13 and 15 years with no history of current mental health disorder (with the exception for anxiety symptoms) or of psychotherapy are included and randomized to either early or late intervention (i.e. waiting list or control group), after being stratified between low or high anxiety group based on State and Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-T) score. Participants on the control group participate on MBI after completing the second assessment. The intervention is an 8-week long MBI adapted to adolescents. Primary outcomes are based on neuroimaging (structural and functional MRI) and secondary outcomes are clinical (self-reported questionnaires covering mostly emotion and stress reactivity and trait mindfulness) and biological (cortisol, inflammation markers and redox markers). Assessments are performed at baseline, immediately after intervention or waiting time and after 18 months of intervention.

Conditions

• Anxiety
• Adolescent Behavior
• Stress

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Minfulness-based Intervention

The proposed MBI is an adaptation from the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) programs to youth. This MBI consists of a total of twelve 90 minutes long sessions, the first 8 being the intervention per se and the last 4 a proposition to the transition to regular practice and a chance to better integrate mindfulness in daily life. A theme regarding mindfulness is addressed in each session, through meditation practices and exercises. Between sessions, participants are invited to practice at home, using an application designed for this study (the MindApp), where participants can find the recorded practices. Investigators have access to participants' use of the meditation recordings and expect that these data will provide a more objective measure of the amount of home practice.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Leenards Foundation

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of Lausanne

  collaborator OTHER

• Swiss National Centre Competence in Research - Synapsy

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of Geneva, Switzerland

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Camille Piguet, Physician · Geneva University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

13 Years

Max Age

15 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-02-12

Primary Completion

2022-11-30

Completion

2022-11-30

Countries

• Switzerland

Study Locations