Biopsychosocial Outcomes of Mindfulness-based Instruction (MindUP)

The University of Alabama at Birmingham

Status: Completed

Conditions: Mental Health Issue; Specific Learning Disability

Treatments: Behavioral: active control group; Behavioral: MindUP group

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05787483

UAB (Other Grant/Funding Number)

IRB-300010662

Details and patient eligibility

About

Over 20% of adolescents living in the United States have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder. However, most adolescents who need mental health services do not receive them due to many reasons, including low resources in families and communities, stigma, lack of mental health providers, and other barriers to mental health care access. Alabama currently ranks 50th in access to mental healthcare and 51st (LAST) in mental healthcare provider availability with only one mental healthcare provider for every 920 persons in need. Most adolescents attend school, so delivering mental health services in the school setting eliminates many barriers to mental health care access. From the point of prevention, participation in universal social and emotional learning (SEL) programs within the school setting improves social and emotional skills, behaviors, attitudes, and academic performance. Mindfulness-based instruction is a promising approach to SEL for improving psychological functioning that is evidence-based, widely available, and scalable to various populations and settings. This project aims to investigate whether a SEL program that incorporates mindfulness-based instruction (MindUP) leads to improvements in not only self-reported well-being (i.e., anxiety, mindful attention, perceived stress, and positive and negative affect), but also objectively measured executive functioning, academic achievement, and regulation of stress physiology. The investigators will partner with schools that serve historically underserved students to test the effectiveness of the MindUP program in 5th and 6th graders. This study has the potential to benefit underserved students and their teachers who will receive training on sustainable implementation of the MindUP curriculum.

Enrollment: 68 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 10 to 14 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Fifth grade students at i3 Academy
• fifth and sixth grade students at Tarrant Intermediate School
• 6th through 8th grade students at Spring Valley School
• All students enrolled in general education will be invited to participate in the study

Exclusion criteria

• those with medical, developmental, or psychiatric conditions that compromise their ability to provide valid self-reports or complete other study procedures
• only one child per family will be allowed to participate to avoid dependency in data due to clustering within families

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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68 participants in 2 patient groups

MindUP group

Experimental group

Description:

Teachers in the MindUP group will deliver the program lessons twice a week for 30 minutes (1 hour per week) for 12 weeks. Based on previous studies, 12 weeks should be sufficient to cover the content from the 17 lessons.

Treatment:

Behavioral: MindUP group

active control group

Active Comparator group

Description:

business as usual; regular wellness or SEL classes

Treatment:

Behavioral: active control group