Abstract
Background
Adolescents’ psychological stress has become an important problem. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are proven to be effective in school settings in the Western world, and so expanding MBIs further is a particularly important consideration.
Objective
This study addresses the effectiveness of MBI in reducing psychological stress in Chinese school settings and the mediating role of resilience between trait mindfulness and psychological stress.
Methods
This study conducts a cluster randomized controlled trial. Ninety-two middle school students in the experimental group received 10 weeks of MBI, with 10 sessions of a mindfulness course, while 97 students in the control group followed their regular school program without intervention.
Results
Psychological stress, trait mindfulness, and psychological resilience were measured by the Psycho-Somatic-Tension-Relaxation Inventory (PSTRI), Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), and Resilience Scale for Chinese Adolescents (RSCA). The results showed that (1) compared with the pretest scores of the experimental group, and the pre- and post-test scores of the control group, the post-test scores of trait mindfulness and psychological resilience in the experimental group were significantly increased, while psychological stress was significantly decreased. (2) Trait mindfulness was positively associated with psychological resilience. Trait mindfulness and psychological resilience were negatively associated with psychological stress. (3) The mediating effect of psychological resilience accounted for 43.58% of the overall effect of trait mindfulness on psychological stress.
Conclusions
These findings provide encouraging evidence for MBI’s effectiveness in reducing adolescents’ psychological stress and the possible mediating role of psychological resilience; thus, MBI is worthy of expanding to Chinese school settings.
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Data Availability
The data that support the findings of the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The current study was supported by Hunan Provincial Postgraduate Quality Curriculum Project of China (Grant No. [2019] 370: 319).
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The current study was supported by Hunan Provincial Postgraduate Quality Curriculum Project of China (Grant No. [2019] 370: 319).
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XL carried out the study and had the main responsibility for writing the manuscript. WT undertook statistical analysis and participated in the writing. RX and WZ was responsible for the translation of English version and involved in revising the draft in several stages. HH, RL, CT and XT were responsible for data collection and preliminary arrangement. All authors read the final manuscript, and all have given final approval of the version submitted for publication.
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Liu, X., Tang, W., **ao, R. et al. Reducing Psychological Stress of Chinese Adolescents by Mindfulness-Based Intervention: The Mediating Role of Resilience. Child Youth Care Forum 52, 351–370 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-022-09690-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-022-09690-0