Trauma-Informed Mental Health in Education: A Mindfulness Based Curriculum (TimeIn)

AbstractStress and anxiety create significant barriers to student well being and academic successparticularly in rural communities where children and families have less access to mental health resources than their urban peersMindfulness based InterventionsMBIscan improve symptoms of stress and anxiety and are increasingly being implemented in school settingsDespite their growing popularityschool based MBIs lack a trauma sensitive approach to delivery and have yet to undergo rigorous empirical studyFurthermost schoolbased MBIs target elementary and high school students even though the average onset for mental health diagnoses is during middle schoolAs anxiety symptoms are at an all time high among students in the U Sstate legislators and school staff are calling for effective mental health programs to be integrated into our educational systemThe proposed interventionTrauma Informed Mental Health in EducationTimeInis a universal mindfulness based mental health curriculum for middle school childrenTimeIn aims to reduce stressanxiety and depression while improving social skillsself efficacy and student behavior through enhanced executive functioning and emotion regulationTimeIn will draw upon best practices from psychology to be traumasensitive and from applied research in education settings to be culturally appropriate and easily integrated into existing middle school curriculaGiven the role of teachers as change agents for childrenthe intervention will include support for middle school teachers during delivery in the form of online professional learning communitiesPLCsOnline PLCs are a novel adaptation of an evidence basedempirically validated face toface approach for building teacher knowledgecapacityand self efficacyThe TimeIn curriculum and online support will increase accessibility to mental health resources for all studentsand particularly for those in rural schoolsDuring Phase Ithe project team will use human centered design to transform three modules of an inperson iteration of TimeIn into a low fidelity prototype for the web based version of the TimeIn curriculumThey will then assess its designcontent validity and feasibility and design the PLC collaboration features for teachersOnce completethe team will iteratively develop and assess a high fidelity prototype with a total of six modulesPhase II will focus on developing the remaining five modules of the TimeIn curriculum and evaluating the efficacyfeasibility and user satisfaction in a randomized control trialThe proposed work will result in a validatedmodule online coursewith PLC collaboration features for teachersthat helps middle school students learn and practice mindfulness to improve psychological and cognitive function NarrativeThe proposed project will develop and evaluate the efficacy of a school based mindfulness curriculum specifically aimed at middle school childrenThe proposed productTimeIntargets children s executive functions and emotion regulation in an effort to enhance their psychological and academic functioning during a critical stage in neural and emotional development