TESTING A MINDFULNESS-BASED PROGRAM ON A NON-CLINICAL SAMPLE OF ROMANIAN CHILDREN: THE EFFECTS ON THE LEVELS OF INTERNALIZING, EXTERNALIZING AND ATTENTION-RELATED PROBLEMS

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Mindfulness-based therapeutic interventions are used for a large area of physical and psychological problems in adult and elderly people, including anxiety disorders, personality disorders, chronic pain and anger. Recently, researchers have started to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based programs on children. The aim of this study is to test the effects of a Mindfulnessbased Program (MBP) on the levels of internalization, externalization and attentionrelated problems of children (41 participants, average age of 8.5 years, SD = 0.4), as compared to the effects of a standard procedure, i.e., Rational Stories program for children. The results revealed that the Mindfulness-based Program had higher effects than the Rational Stories program on the decrease of the attentionrelated problems, while no statistically significant differences were found at levels of internalizing and externalizing problems (i.e., both programs were associated with a decrease of the two types of problems).

Keywords

• attention-related problems
• mindfulness
• emotion regulation