Project Summary/Abstract
Adolescent mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression, have drastically increased over the past
decade with major costs to individuals and society. Mental health problems are known to contribute to immediate
and long-term stress-related physical health problems. Unfortunately, adolescents exposed to chronic stressors
are at an increased risk for developing mental health problems likely due to impairments in emotion regulation,
a self-regulatory task of adolescence necessary for coping with stressors. Mindfulness-based interventions
(MBIs) have been proposed to ameliorate mental and physical health problems through improvements in
mindfulness and emotion regulation difficulties. However, most research on adolescent MBI mechanisms of
change has only been conducted at the between-subjects level with cross-sectional data that are subject to low
ecological validity. Further, little is known about how MBIs help adolescents to maintain mindfulness and healthy
emotion regulation in moments of stress. The use of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) can help to fill
these gaps in the literature by providing information about momentary, state-level processes. The purpose of
this project is to utilize EMA to understand the extent to which an MBI promotes adolescents’ maintenance of
mindfulness and healthy emotion regulation in moments of stress. The specific aims are to (1) characterize, prior
to an intervention, the real-time, dynamic relationships between life stressors, state mindfulness, and state
emotion regulation difficulties in at-risk adolescents and (2) to investigate the extent to which participation in an
MBI compared to a control condition changes these real-time, dynamic relationships. These aims will be tested
within the context of a larger, parent randomized controlled trial designed to study an MBI’s feasibility and
acceptability as well as its effectiveness for improving maladaptive eating behaviors among at-risk adolescents
(11-18y) referred to a community-based mentoring program for being “at-risk for not reaching their full potential.”
The current proposal is a novel extension of this trial by adding EMA measurements of mindfulness, emotion
regulation difficulties, and life stressors to a sample subset (n=80 of N=160). Multilevel structural equation
modeling will be used to investigate the aims. This proposal is designed to advance the candidate’s long-term
goal of becoming an independent scientist with advanced methodological and statistical knowledge that can be
applied to maximizing the effectiveness of MBIs and contemplative practices for use in communities with chronic
stress exposure. The training objectives are to a) develop necessary skills to conduct and analyze EMA, b) gain
knowledge about MBI clinical trials with adolescents in high-stress contexts, and c) further understanding of
stress-related physiological mechanisms of change in MBIs. Knowledge generated from this proposal will provide
essential information about the extent to which an MBI impacts theorized mechanisms of change and the training
will enable the candidate to become an innovative, skilled researcher capable of utilizing advanced statistics to
conduct rigorous research on complementary and integrative practices for adolescents in high-stress contexts.
