Beneficios del programa Mindfulness for Health en niños que presentan trastorno por déficit de atención e hiperactividad

Abstract

[eng] People with attention deficit disorder (ADHD) have particular difficulty in identifying and processing negative emotions. The Sant Joan de Déu hospital in Barcelona has proposed the Mindfulness for Health (M4H) program, a structured mindfulness-based program that appears to improve emotional regulation in children with ADHD. The overall objective of this work is to evaluate its benefits on the symptoms of the disorder (inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity), on emotional regulation, on a measure of child psychopathology and in a measure of sustained attention. The sample was made up of 19 children between 7 and 12 years old with a previous diagnosis of ADHD. A quasi-experimental design was carried out where 11 children were part of the treatment group, while 8 were in a waiting list condition. The benefits of the program were found by analyzing the pre-post change score using the Residual Gain Score. Significant improvements were found in the treatment group for the following variables: emotional dysregulation (p = .006), attention problems (p = .021), slow cognitive tempo (p = .021), aggressiveness (p = .001), and trouble following the rules (p = .041). The results suggest that the M4H program is a feasible intervention that can improve the neurocognitive, emotional, and behavioral difficulties of children with ADHD