Stressed at school? Art therapy reduces teenage girls' headaches
July 30, 2019
Science Daily/University of Washington
In a pilot study, researchers explored art-based mindfulness activities that schools could use to reduce headaches, a common side effect of stress in adolescent girls. After three weeks of twice-weekly mindfulness and art therapy sessions, 8 teenage girls reported experiencing significantly fewer headaches.
Teenagers report higher levels of stress than adults, and cite school as the highest contributing factor, according to the American Psychological Association's annual report. A summary from 2013 concluded that while stress among Americans was not new, "what's troubling is the stress outlook for teens in the United States."
In response, recently some schools have turned to mindfulness-based programs as a way to alleviate stress among their students. These programs could benefit from more research into what activities students find most useful.
In a pilot study led by the University of Washington, researchers explored art-based mindfulness activities that schools could use to reduce headaches, a common side effect of stress in adolescent girls. The test group of eight teenage girls gave feedback on which activities they preferred.
After three weeks of twice-weekly mindfulness and art therapy sessions, the girls reported experiencing significantly fewer headaches. At the beginning of the study, the girls reported 7.38 headaches, on average, within the previous two-week period. At the end of the study, that number had dropped to 4.63 -- almost a 40% decrease. This drop remained even seven weeks after the study had ended. The researchers published their findings May 22 in the journal Art Therapy.
"This study highlights one of my main research missions: We should be making interventions in cooperation with teenagers if we want these strategies to work," said corresponding author Elin Björling, a senior research scientist in the UW's human centered design and engineering department. "There's something powerful about saying 'I'm inviting you to start thinking about how you could get better. Come have a conversation with me about how we could do this.' I think that's why we saw such a strong response even in this tiny study."
The team recruited eight girls between the ages of 14 to 17 from a high school in Seattle. All of the participants reported experiencing three or more headaches not related to an injury within a two-week period, and five of the eight mentioned tension or stress as the main reason for headaches.
During the program, the students met twice a week for a 50-minute session with the research team. Each session began with an activity in which students would map where they were feeling stressed on a drawing of a body. Then the teens would participate in mindfulness and art activities before closing the session with another body map.
"After the study, we looked at all the before and after body maps side by side. It was so clear that something significant was going on," Björling said. "In the beginning everything was in pieces, and in the end everything was flowing through the whole body."
The teens tried different mindfulness techniques in each session so they could find which ones worked the best for them.
What teens liked: square breathing, a technique that encourages people to take slow breaths by concentrating and counting.
"I thought: 'No teen ever wants to do counted breathing, and they're never going to do it,'" Björling said. "But a few of them said 'That's my favorite. I do it all the time now.'"
What teens didn't like: mindful eating, a technique that asks people to focus on what and how they're eating.
"They hated it," Björling said. "This was a technique straight out of a lot of mindfulness programs for teens, but it didn't connect with them. It just annoyed them. It goes to show I need them to be experts in their own lives."
The researchers also asked the students to participate in different mindful art activities. During each session, the students tried a new art medium -- they particularly liked using oil pastels -- and different types of art therapy projects, including one where they worked together to create mandalas before and after a meditation exercise.
While the teens experienced fewer headaches after the study ended, their overall stress levels didn't change much. But the students reported feeling better in the moment, saying that they felt like they could handle whatever happened for the rest of the day.
The team was surprised to see any differences, given the small size of the group.
"It's not just about this study," Björling said. "This problem of teen mental health and headaches is so big that I'm worried about what happens if we don't take it on. Somistine Stevens, a nursing professor at UW Tacoma, and Narayan Singh, a psychology doctoral student at Seattle Pacific University, are also co-authors on this paper.e teens will want nothing to do with art mindfulness. So we need to come at this in lots of different ways. We're going to need an army of people and a cornucopia of options."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190730092626.htm
Mindfulness may help mothers cope with stress when their babies have a heart condition
Working with mothers, nurse researchers form CHOP and Penn Nursing analyze coping techniques, including positive focus on here and now
November 2, 2017
Science Daily/Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Mindfulness may offer an active coping mechanism for mothers faced with the stress of having a newborn diagnosed with congenital heart disease (CHD). Mindfulness, which aims to increase a person's awareness and acceptance of daily experiences, is currently used in a variety of healthcare settings as a potentially effective skill for stress reduction, emotion, affect and attention regulation.
A team of nurse-researchers from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) published a study in the Journal of Pediatric Nursing in which they gathered perspectives on coping mechanisms from focus groups with 14 mothers of critically ill infants, and explored the feasibility of mindfulness as a stress-reduction technique.
"Mothers of infants with complex congenital heart disease are exposed to increased stress, which has been associated with numerous adverse outcomes," said Barbara Medoff-Cooper, PhD, RN FAAN, principal investigator and nurse scientist in the Cardiac Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and at Penn Nursing. "The coping mechanisms these mothers use critically impacts the family's adaptation to the illness, and most likely infant outcomes as well."
"Thus far, parental interventions in the CICU generally are informative or educational, aiming to increase parental abilities to actively manage the caretaking demands of an infant with CHD," said Nadya Golfenshtein, PhD, RN, lead author of the study and a researcher at Penn Nursing. "Mindfulness can be a helpful tool that assists mothers during an incredibly stressful time for them, and for their family by allowing them to pause and be present in the moment rather than wishing something different was happening or worrying about tomorrow."
The researchers collected data during focus groups between July 2015 and March 2016. The sessions included a short introduction to mindfulness as a stress reduction intervention, led by a moderator who is a psychotherapist experienced in group formats.
"In the study, mothers described the post-diagnostic period, surgery and the cardiac intensive care unit stay as extremely stressful," said Amy J. Lisanti, PhD, RN, CCNS, CCRN-K, nurse researcher at CHOP and NRSA postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. "Many expressed concerns regarding the post-discharge period when they would need to independently handle their infant's condition. Their increased stress often led them to feel out of control, lethargic and not like themselves. They acknowledged the importance of stress reduction, recognizing that relief from stress could help them sleep better, recharge energy, focus and think clearly."
After experiencing a brief guided session of mindfulness in a focus group, one mother said, "Most meditation is about clear your mind and lose focus, but this is to focus on now. I think it works for me, I was never able to do the clear mind thing. This is more accessible to me." Another noted, "This is something I'm doing for myself, remembering I'm part of this too. Sometimes you are on autopilot, making sure everyone else is ok. Yes, this is a moment when I'm doing something for myself."
The mothers agreed that mindfulness should start early, preferably immediately after the prenatal CHD diagnosis. That way, they felt, that they would have time to learn and practice the skill by the time the baby is born. There was also a general agreement that the worst time to begin the practice is around surgery, as that is an overwhelming time and mothers are too busy to learn a new skill. The mothers preferred engaging in mindfulness in a private, quiet room as the sounds of the CICU stress them and may prevent them from relaxing.
"We hope to design a program that draws from these findings and more research on mindfulness meditation is needed in a larger cohort of mothers," added Golfenshtein.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171102124912.htm