The Effect of School-Based Mindfulness Interventions on Anxious and Depressive Symptoms: A Meta-analysis

Anxious and depressive symptoms are highly prevalent in school-aged youth and can lead to a multitude of negative outcomes. School-based mindfulness interventions may be able to target gaps in evidence-based treatments for anxious and depressive symptoms. The current meta-analysis aimed to synthesize the literature of school-based mindfulness interventions that target anxious and depressive symptoms in youth and to compare the effectiveness of these interventions with active and waitlist control groups. Overall small significant effect sizes were found for these interventions for both anxious symptoms and depressive symptoms, though they were not significantly different from the aggregated effect sizes of the active control groups or the waitlist control groups, suggesting that mindfulness interventions may not provide additional benefits for these internalizing symptoms. Moderator analyses found that interventions delivered to elementary students yielded significantly higher rates of change than interventions delivered to high school students, but there were no differences when comparing the level or implementer of intervention. Overall, the findings of this meta-analysis highlight a critical need to better define what constitutes a “mindfulness intervention” and call into question the effectiveness of those currently being implemented to address youth anxiety and depression in school settings.