The Effectiveness of Mindfulness Training on Behavioral Problems and Attentional Functioning in Adolescents with ADHD
The Effectiveness of Mindfulness Training on Behavioral
Problems and Attentional Functioning in Adolescents with ADHD
Link To Article:
The authors of this study sought to monitor the effects of
Mindfulness training on several adolescents and their parents by way of a 16
week study that included behavior assessment tests, parental and adolescent
mindfulness training, and test designed to measure attention and executive
functioning behaviors.
To
start, the authors go to great length in their efforts to justify this
study. I felt that this section
was unnecessarily long as the topic has plenty of literature to back it
up. I got the sense that they went
above and beyond in this section because their study was so small (by the end
of the study, the results of only 6 adolescents were tallied.) There were also some seeming
contradictions in their introductory statements. In one paragraph, they say “Two recent reviews
show that there is a growing body of evidence on the effectiveness of
mindfulness training for children and adolescents.” Less than one paragraph later, they say “To our
knowledge, there are only a few studies investigating the effects of
mindfulness or meditation training in children or adolescents with ADHD.” In yet another instance, the authors
mention a study in which “…self-reported ADHD symptoms and performance on
several neurocognitive attention tasks improved after mindfulness training in a
mixed group of adults and adolescents.”
Less than two sentences later, the authors claim “The above mentioned
studies only included children and adolescents in the treatment. “ Needless to say, these opening
statements had me questioning the validity of this paper before I had even
gotten to the heart of it.
Measurement
tools used in the study:
1)
To assess Behavioral Symptoms, the researchers
used the Youth Self Report (YSR), the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), and the
Teacher Report Form (TRF)
2)
For Executive Functioning, the researchers used
the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BREIF). Of note, the BREIF has been used in
several of the articles that I have reviewed thus far, and is reputable for
being strong internal consistencies.
3)
Mindful Awareness was measured with the Mindful
Attention and Awareness Scale (MAAS)
4)
Parenting Stress was measured by the Parenting
Stress Index (PSI)
5)
Parenting Style was assessed using the 30 item
Parenting Scale (PS) which “assesses dysfunctional discipline styles.”
6)
Fatigue among adolescents was measured using the
Finders Fatigue Scale (FFS)
7)
Happiness was measured in adolescents by using
the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS)
8)
Lastly, Adolescents performed three computerized
tasks. One task measured baseline
speed (pertaining to attention), and the other two measured sustained
attention.
In conclusion, the researchers were able to accurately
measure (given that this was a tiny study) a strong correlation between
improvement in sustained attention in both adolescents with ADHD and parents of
adolescents with ADHD by having them engage in regular mindfulness
training. Their test results showed
the strongest correlation of reduction of ADHD associated behaviors by way of
Mindfulness practice directly after training. Results only improved and became stronger when the patients
were followed up with 8 weeks later.
Consistent with other studies on this that covered a broader sample
size, after 16 weeks of mindfulness training, many of the improvements to
attention had dropped off. While
studies show promise in mindfulness training for adolescents with ADHD in the
early stages, more research is needed to find promising evidence of long term
positive effects.
Van de Weijer-Bergsma, E., Formsma, A., R., de Bruin, E.I.,
Bogels, S.M. (2012) Published with open access at Springerlink.com http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=33&sid=bf1f871c-b662-4da2-a50e-176a7ff6618a%40sessionmgr103
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