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:

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=33&sid=bf1f871c-b662-4da2-a50e-176a7ff6618a%40sessionmgr103

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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