Funding outcome

As many as 36.7% of teenagers experience mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder, and rates of mental illness in youth may be rising. Most research about mental health treatments focuses on adults, even though teenagers may respond differently treatments because their brains are still developing. This study will look at the effects of a meditation treatment called mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy (MBSR) on the brain activity of a group of teenagers with many different psychiatric conditions. MBSR is an 8-week program that teaches participants to intentionally pay attention to the present moment without judging their thoughts, feelings, or experiences. The participants in this study were 32 teens from a treatment facility for youth with severe mental health and behaviour problems. Half the teens received MBSR therapy and half the teens participated in a different kind of therapy where they didn't meditate. We recorded both groups' brain waves while they sat in a dark and quiet room before they received treatment and 3-months later. To determine whether the MBSR treatment changed the way the teens' brains functioned, we will analyze the different waves that make up our recordings. The teenagers who received the MBSR treatment have reported in another study that they had better moods, better relationships with themselves and others, better self control, better problem-solving, and that they were living more 'in the moment'. Given what the MBSR group said about how the treatment helped them, we expect that they will show improvements in brain waves associated with depression and other mental illnesses when we compare brain waves before and after treatment. The group who did not receive the MBSR treatment should not show changes in their brain-waves between the two recordings. We hope that this project will add further support to the research suggesting meditation therapies like MBSR are effective for teenagers with many different kinds of mental illness, and help us explain why this type of therapy works.