Teach mindfulness to save pupils from life of drugs, say experts

MINDFULNESS should be taught in schools to keep teenagers away from drink and drugs, top academics have said.

Research suggests brain exercises which focus on selfcontrol may enable youngsters to resist peer pressure – and stop them engaging in ‘risk-taking’ behaviours such as joining gangs, binge-drinking and taking drugs.

Mindfulness – a meditation-style technique often used to help adults with depression, anxiety and other mental health issues – has already been adopted by some state and private schools, including £35,000-a-year Wellington College.

Now researchers believe it could be incorporated into the national curriculum to help pupils build psychological resilience – and have launched the first study into how effective it could be in schools.

Professor Sarah- Jayne Blake- more, who is one of the team carrying out the £6.4million trial, said it could be particularly helpful to teenagers, whose brains are more vulnerable to taking part in harmful activities.

Professor Blakemore, of University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: ‘Adolescents, when they take risks like taking drugs or trying smoking or binge- drink- ing, it’s when they’re with their friends. Gang culture is all about peer pressure.

‘Mindfulness tries to improve self- control and decision-making. Self- control when you’re really tempted by the heat of the emotion or your friends egging you on – or the stress involved.’

She added that mindfulness training, which includes breathing exercises and imagined sce- narios, was about ‘not allowing these risky thoughts to snowball out of control and take over your decisions’.

The nationwide pilot involves nearly 6,000 youngsters aged 11 to 14 across 76 schools, including some inner-city comprehensives. Half the schools will teach mindfulness and the other half standard PSHE – personal, health and social education – lessons.

Mindfulness training will take place over ten lessons a term and will run for five years, with a follow-up period of two years for every pupil. They will be assessed using computerised tests, with results compared with those of the control group.

Researchers from the University of Oxford, UCL and the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, aim to examine a range of outcomes, including attention and attainment, as well as mental well-being and prevention of mental illness.

If the practice is proved to be effective, the Department for Education may decide to roll it out to all schools.