Power Source
Problems addressed
Internalizing behaviors/problems
Effectiveness

Promising

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Promising

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Life periods served
Teenagers (14 to 17 years)
Where the program was applied
Prisons or socio-educational residential centers
Country of application
United States
Description

This is a group cognitive behavioral and mindfulness therapy program for 16 to 18-year-old male adolescents incarcerated in high-security institutions. The aim is to modulate psychophysiological reactions and reduce aggressive and impulsive behavior.
The program combines the behavioral change and problem-solving components of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with the attention and reaction modification components of mindfulness to encourage prosocial behavior in stressful and risky situations.
The intervention is implemented by leaders who follow a playbook and audiovisual resources to support the application of group activities over 3 to 5 weeks.

Impact evaluations

An impact evaluation showed that program participants had a statistically significant reduction in attention capacity decline, as indicated by the measures of accuracy and response variability. There was no statistically significant effect on response time [1].
Overall, the preponderance of evidence suggests that the program had the intended impact on the young people in the treatment group, protecting them against attention decline while in a situation of incarceration.

Bibliographic reference

[1] Leonard, N. R., Jha, A. P., Casarjian, B., Goolsarran, M., Garcia, C., Cleland, C. M., Gwadz, M. V. & Massey, Z. (2013). Mindfulness training improves attentional task performance in incarcerated youth: A group randomized controlled intervention trial. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 792. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00792

Information source