Mindfulness supports emotional resilience in children during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

An important aspect of mental health in children is emotional resilience, the capacity to adapt to, and recover from, stressors and emotional challenges. Variation in trait mindfulness, one’s disposition to attend to experiences with an open and nonjudgmental attitude, may be an important individual difference in children that supports emotional resilience. In this study, we investigated whether trait mindfulness was related to emotional resilience in response to stressful changes in education and home-life during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. We conducted a correlational study examining self-report data from July 2020 to February 2021, from 163 eight-to-ten-year-old children living in the US. Higher trait mindfulness scores correlated with less stress, anxiety, depression, and negative affect in children, and lower ratings of COVID-19 impact on their lives. Mindfulness moderated the relationship between COVID-19 child impact and negative affect. Children scoring high on mindfulness showed no correlation between rated COVID-19 impact and negative affect, whereas those who scored low on mindfulness showed a positive correlation between child COVID-19 impact and negative affect. Higher levels of trait mindfulness may have helped children to better cope with a wide range of COVID-19 stressors. Future studies should investigate the mechanisms by which trait mindfulness supports emotional resilience in children.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Funding Statement

This research was funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative as part of the Reach Every Reader Project, National Institutes of Health (F32-HD100064 to OO) https://reacheveryreader.gse.harvard.edu/, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (Grant No. 1745302 to HO), https://www.nsfgrfp.org/. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

This project received Institutional Review Board approval at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

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I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable.

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Data Availability

Data and code will be made publicly available on publication at https://osf.io/48bk3/.

https://osf.io/48bk3/

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