Meditation Effects on Anxiety and Resilience of Preadolescents and Adolescents: A Randomized Controlled Study

Meditation has been described as having a positive impact on well-being while reducing anxiety and stress among those who practice, mainly working as a resource to cope with everyday difficulties. As a simple and easy to apply meditation technique, transcendental meditation (TM) has shown promising results in adults and in children, although more studies are needed to show the impact on psychological and behavioral dimensions in children and adolescents. This quasi-experimental, pre-test-post-test study, with a control group, aimed to evaluate the impact of TM on the stress and resilience of children and adolescents, with ages between 9 and 16 years old. Participants were selected within schools which implemented the Quiet Time Program (QT), from those who volunteered to participate. They were randomly assigned to an experimental group (immediate TM learning) and to a control group (delayed TM learning). A repeated measures ANOVA showed an interaction of time and group on externalizing behavior, from the strengths and difficulties measure. The experimental group decreased on externalizing less adjusted behaviors, while the control group increased in this aspect, after a twelve-week period. TM failed to reduce anxiety and to contribute to resilience in the TM experimental group. Both groups improved anxiety indicators. The results might suggest students were acting upon their expectation of improvement on practicing TM or solely modifying their behavior along the contextual factors, which affected both groups equally.

Automated summary

Research suggests that transcendental meditation may help reduce maladaptive externalizing behaviors, but does not decrease anxiety or enhance resilience in children and adolescents. Both groups showed improvement in anxiety indicators, possibly due to students' expectations of improvement from practicing transcendental meditation or simply modifying their behavior in response to contextual factors.