Stapley, Emily;
Hayes, Daniel;
March, Anna;
Mansfield, Rosie;
Burrell, Kim;
Ashworth, Emma;
Moltrecht, Bettina;
... Deighton, Jessica; + view all
(2025)
A Qualitative Study of English School Children’s Experiences of Two Brief, Universal, Classroom-Based Mental Health and Wellbeing Interventions: Mindfulness and Relaxation.
Contemporary School Psychology
10.1007/s40688-025-00567-2.
(In press).
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Abstract
There is growing interest in how mindfulness and relaxation, taught in a school setting, can help children to manage their mental health and wellbeing. However, to date there has been a paucity of qualitative research seeking to explore children’s experiences of these interventions. Focus groups were conducted with 65 students (aged 8 to 12) across seven schools participating in a randomised controlled trial in England in 2019. Participants had received either a brief Mindfulness-Based Exercises or Relaxation Techniques intervention, delivered by school staff on a universal (whole-class) basis. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Participants across both interventions cited the importance of having a quiet, calming atmosphere within the classroom to facilitate delivery, as well as the need for variation in activities. Many participants described the interventions as having a positive impact. However, some felt that the interventions could also induce feelings of annoyance, stress, and physical discomfort. The interventions differed in terms of some of the mechanisms behind positive impact identified by participants, with Relaxation Techniques reported as taking difficult feelings away and Mindfulness-Based Exercises described as enabling difficult feelings to be let go. The findings have implications for future intervention delivery in a school context. The findings identify how and why these interventions can work from children’s perspectives (e.g., through reducing difficult feelings), as well as what can undermine positive impact (e.g., finding activities boring).
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A Qualitative Study of English School Children’s Experiences of Two Brief, Universal, Classroom-Based Mental Health and Wellbeing Interventions: Mindfulness and Relaxation |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s40688-025-00567-2 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-025-00567-2 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Mindfulness; Relaxation; School; Qualitative; Mental health; Wellbeing |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Behavioural Science and Health |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10214048 |
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