Recently, an article was published by Psychology Today about mindfulness in schools. It details how teens in the United States are struggling with mental health more than ever before.
A survey from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted in 2021 found 44 percent of teens experienced feelings of sadness or hopelessness that prevented them from participating in normal activities.
The pandemic was especially hard on youth. In comparison to 2019, emergency room visits for mental health emergencies in 2021 increased by 51 percent for adolescent girls; attempts increased by 4 percent for boys.
Cornell researcher Dr. Joshua Felver found that mindfulness programs specifically in schools reduced behavioral problems, helped to prevent anxiety and depression, and helped students to improve their focus. They also found that school-based mindfulness programs helped to promote classroom engagement, emotion regulation, social skills, optimism, and productive classroom behavior.
Mindfulness is an integral part of our community at Lausanne, enhancing the students' physical, mental and emotional well-being.
Whenever you do a mindfulness moment, it always helps your brain reset for the next class. Anything that might have been getting on your mind, forget about it, and go on with your day,” Will Carter '24 said.
Lausanne has been at the forefront of the mindfulness movement for a decade, continuing to integrate new techniques each year to benefit our students. Before every class period, classroom teachers lead the students in a brief “Mindful Moment” (typically from 30 seconds to two minutes) to help the students get focused and ready to learn. Mindfulness trainers also come to campus several times per year to lead our teachers through mindfulness sessions to better deal with stress and fatigue.
“Mindfulness-based programming is known to have broad-ranging, positive health effects, and in particular stress reduction,” Felver said. “By reducing stress, mindfulness programming affects all the other health outcomes associated with stress. And we know that it helps people to build resilience.”