Global Health seminar - Improving the mental health and educational success of young people: experimental evidence from a mindfulness-based programme in Pakistan

Event details

Authors: Dr Jennifer Opare-Kumi & Dr Zahra Mansoor

Abstract: Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction are a class of group-based interventions that have emerged to help people manage stress, improve their mood and quality of life. However, these interventions are typically implemented in adult populations. As such, there is limited evidence on the impact of such mindfulness-based programmes on student mental health, and educational success. This research evaluates the impact of a mindfulness-based programme on student mental health, behaviour change, capacity to learn, and educational success in two low-cost private schools in Faisalabad, Pakistan. A total of 214 secondary school students were randomly assigned to a mindfulness programme treatment group, and a neutral class activity control group. The study shows three main results. First, it demonstrates that the intervention improves student’s prosociality. Second, the mindfulness programme impacts behaviour change, specifically improving mood and stress at home. Lastly, students who received the programme exhibit a greater capacity to learn, particularly demonstrating higher levels of grit. These findings have implications for how to implement and scale-up mindfulness-based programmes for young people, particularly in low-resource settings.

If you are not a member of University of York staff and are interested in attending a seminar, please contact akseer.hussain@york.ac.uk so that we can ensure we have sufficient space.

Dr. Jennifer Opare-Kumi, University of Oxford