An Umbrella Review of Meta-analyses of School-Based Mindfulness Based Interventions (MBIs)
Mindfulness March 18, 2026 Sinead Grennan, Annie O’Dowd, Conal Twomey et al.
An umbrella review of six meta-analyses covering 110 primary studies and 28,910 participants found that school-based mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) for children and adolescents aged 5–18 years produce very small improvements in wellbeing, mindfulness, and anxiety, but no effect on depression. The pooled effect sizes were small (wellbeing g = 0.13, mindfulness g = 0.11, anxiety g = 0.11, depression g = 0.05). The quality of the included reviews ranged from critically low to moderate, and the certainty of evidence was very low across all outcomes due to risk of bias, inconsistency, and imprecision. The evidence is limited and inconsistent, highlighting the need for further high-quality randomized controlled trials.