Mindfulness-Based Intervention for Adolescents

The Mindfulteen Study is a 3-year long longitudinal cohort study with a nested randomized controlled trial, integrating neuroimaging, biological and clinical outcomes, and designed to evaluate the impact of a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) on young adolescents. Young adolescents between 13 and 15 years with no history of current mental health disorder (with the exception for anxiety symptoms) or of psychotherapy are included and randomized to either early or late intervention (i.e. waiting list or control group), after being stratified between low or high anxiety group based on State and Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-T) score. Participants on the control group participate on MBI after completing the second assessment. The intervention is an 8-week long MBI adapted to adolescents. Primary outcomes are based on neuroimaging (structural and functional MRI) and secondary outcomes are clinical (self-reported questionnaires covering mostly emotion and stress reactivity and trait mindfulness) and biological (cortisol, inflammation markers and redox markers). Assessments are performed at baseline, immediately after intervention or waiting time and after 18 months of intervention.