School-based Practices in Arts and Resilience for Kids

This proposal will implement and test feasibility and efficacy of school-based art therapy and yoga/mindfulness programming to reduce mental health disparities and foster resilience in youth. We will conduct a cross-over randomized trial with n=250 youth (any race/ethnicity or gender, ages 11-14) from two schools: one serving majority Black/African American students and one serving a population-representative ethnoracial demographic with 50% economically disadvantaged students. Baseline data collection will assess experiences of discrimination, negative experiences, positive experiences, and severity of posttraumatic stress, anxiety, depression, somatic symptoms, and resilience. Youth will be randomly assigned to art therapy or yoga/mindfulness for a quarter. Hour-long weekly sessions will occur during elective course times within school to bolster accessibility and generate data to inform future school-based care models for sustainability. Target schools co-developed this design with the research team. At the end of the quarter, participants will engage in post-intervention data collection, including qualitative interviews regarding their experience with the school-based programming. Participants will then cross over to the yoga/mindfulness or art therapy for the subsequent quarter, such that all participants receive both modalities. The methods described above will be repeated, including the assessments. Academic performance will be assessed throughout. We hypothesize that both modalities will be effective in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression related to discrimination, adversity, and trauma that disproportionately impacts racially and ethnically minoritized youth. We anticipate that qualitative feedback will identify points of optimization for programming and inform which students may be most responsive to what intervention(s).