The Healthy Learning Mind is an interdisciplinary research and development project that was carried out in collaboration with Folkhälsan Research Center and the University of Helsinki to promote health, well-being, and learning through mindfulness-based interventions.
Link to the research groups webpage
The Healthy Learning Mind-research project mapped how mindfulness affects attention, stress management, mental health, happiness, and compassion in 12–15-year-old students. 3519 students and their teachers and parents participated in the research project in 2014–2016.
The research project was extended to a development project in the autumn of 2016 when the research group received funding for health promotion from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. During the development project, a mindfulness-based program for health promotion was developed and implemented for both school staff and students in Finnish primary and lower secondary schools. The development of the subsequent program was based on the results of this research and the experiences of mindfulness practices among school staff and students.
The aim was to provide schools with a concrete and cost-effective tool for promoting well-being, learning, and happiness among students and school staff – and for improving the social atmosphere in classrooms.
The ability to face new and stressful situations during human life depends on the individual's internal resources that develop in the interplay between psychological, physiological, and social components in life. The idea is that exercises and reflection intended to strengthen and support that capacity can counteract stressors, and promote health and well-being.
The concept of mindfulness, or simply conscious presence, is considered a non-judgmental state of awareness and readiness to pay attention to the flow of consciousness, thoughts, and experiences, in the present. Mindfulness can be described as the awareness that arises by directing one's attention to the current situation, the present, and having an accepting attitude to the feelings, experiences and thoughts that might arise.
Mindfulness is believed to have originated from the Eastern meditative tradition. It was later reworked and implemented into Western psychology and medicine in various ways. Nowadays, various forms of mindfulness are used as forms of therapy, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, dialectical behaviour therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy. In addition to this, many feel that mindfulness functions as a form of reflective introspection that can provide new insights about oneself and peace within ones identity.
The importance of practicing awareness skills is emphasized in the lively modern life where it can be difficult to slow down and take time. Mindfulness has been shown to develop individuals' attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation and contribute to a change in perspective on the self and insight into how one's consciousness works.
Mindfulness has been studied in adults for about 40 years and further research has shown promising positive associations between mindfulness practices and health behaviours, such as smoking cessation, reduced binge eating, alcohol, and drug use. It has also been shown that mindfulness can have positive effects on the psychological well-being of already healthy participants. Recently, brain monitoring has also been used to study the effects of mindfulness-based methods or meditation at the neural level. Changes have been reported both in structural features and in brain function, particularly related to attention control and emotion regulation.
Despite their popularity, relatively few studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of conscious presence in children and adolescents. There is a need for methodologically credible research in the field that explores the effectiveness of mindfulness and delves into yet unresolved issues such as gender differences, the role of awareness competence to reduce health inequalities, impact on students with special needs, and long-term effects on well-being and mental health.
Over the past ten years, interest in exploring awareness skills among children and young people has increased enormously. To date, studies among children and adolescents have shown that awareness exercises develop qualities that promote attention, emotional balance, happiness, compassion, and social ability.
The Healthy Learning Mind was divided into a research project and a development project.
The purpose of the research project was to explore the effectiveness of a mindfulness intervention program compared to a regular relaxation program among a large sample of children and adolescents in school contexts. The research project systematically examined the effects of mindfulness on changes in medical, psychological, psychophysiological, neuropsychological and educational outcomes. The studies were designed to evaluate children's and adolescents' resilience, mental health and wellbeing as primary outcomes, and related underlying mechanisms together with the school's social climate, social relationships, school performance and health behaviour as secondary outcomes.
This research consisted of several studies that were conducted in the form of RCT studies, randomized controlled trials. In RCT studies, participants are randomly divided into control group and test group. It is important that the participants do not know which group they belong to as this can affect the results, and that the study includes enough participants, constituing a representative sample from the population that is being studied.
The control group often undergoes some form of placebo intervention, and some cases, a seond control group is used that does not undergo any intervention at all. This way, we can compare the effect of not having an intervention with the real intervention and placebo intervention. RCT studies are considered the gold standard of interventional studies, since they give us the best opportunity to isolate and evaluate the effect of an intervention, medication, or treatment.
The results of this research indicates that mindfulness works better than regular relaxation exercises to reduce anxiety among young people. Mindfulness also seems to improve participants' resilience and socio-emotional functioning while simultaneously reducing depressive symptoms.
The purpose of the development project was to promote the wellbeing of students and school staff by implementing mindfulness methods in schools. During the development project, a feasibility study was conducted to assess the best ways to implement mindfulness methods in schools. According to the study, it would be possible to train school staff in mindfulness methods that they can then implement as mindfulness sessions during the school day. As of today, the intervention programmes are ready, and the schools are working on implementing them.
In summary, the research indicates that mindfulness exercises have a lot to offer to both children and adults. Since education systems traditionally teach about how the world around us works, mindfulness can present knowledge about ourselves and how the self works. In a way, the art of minding ones mind could be considered an essential part of the skillset needed to know thyself.
Simon Granroth, Science Communicator
References:
Beattie, M.M., Konttinen, H.M., Volanen, S-M., Knittle, K., & Hankonen, . et al. Social Cognitions and Mental Health as Predictors of Adolescents’ Mindfulness Practice. Mindfulness 11, 1204–1217 (2020).
Volanen S-M., Lassander M., Hankonen N., Santalahti P., Hintsanen M., Simonsen N., Raevuori A., Mullola, S., Vahlberg T., But A., Suominen S. Healthy Learning Mind - Effectiveness of a mindfulness program on mental health compared to a relaxation program and teaching as usual in schools: a cluster-randomised controlled trial. Journal of Affective Disorders, 2019, 260: 660-669.
Beattie M., Hankonen N., Salo G., Knittle K., Volanen S-M. Applying behavioral theory to increase mindfulness practice among adolescents: an exploratory intervention study using within-trial RCT design. Mindfulness. 2019, 10:2, 312-324.
Volanen S-M., Lassander M., Hankonen N., Santalahti P., Hintsanen M., Simonsen N., Raevuori A., Mullola S., Vahlberg T., But, A., Suominen S. Healthy Learning Mind - a school-based mindfulness and relaxation program: a study protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial. BMC Psychology, 2016, 4:35.
