Research Recap with Skye: Mindfulness and ADHD
Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our Research Recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper, dive into what it says and how it was conducted, and try to find practical takeaways.
In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation for Primary School Children: Effects on Attention and Psychological Well-Being." The study investigates mindfulness-oriented meditation and its effects on attention and emotional health in seven- to eight-year-old children. So, let's get into it.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at https://HackingYourADHD.com/302
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William Curb: Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our Research Recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper, dive into what it says and how it was conducted, and try to find practical takeaways.
In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation for Primary School Children: Effects on Attention and Psychological Well-Being." The study investigates mindfulness-oriented meditation and its effects on attention and emotional health in seven- to eight-year-old children. So, let's get into it.
Skye Waterson: Yes! So, they looked at two classes in a primary school in Italy. Essentially, they wanted to see if mindfulness and meditation had an effect on these students, both from the students' perspective and from their teachers' perspective.
They mentioned a really interesting limitation in previous studies: often, parents had been doing the meditation with the students and then reporting how much they thought it helped. The researchers noted that those parents were probably—without realizing it—responding to how much more peaceful they felt after meditating.
William Curb: That’s a huge factor. As a parent, I notice that when I am dysregulated, anything my kids do feels so much worse. I have to tell myself, "Okay, it’s really important that I regulate myself." If I'm regulated, I’m going to have a completely different perspective on whether they’re acting out or not.
Skye Waterson: Exactly. You can just imagine it: a parent opens their eyes, their kids have been quiet for a few minutes, and they think, "This is amazing, this is going to work so well." Which is great—at the end of the day, the parents are meditating now, too, so good for them.
William Curb: Yeah, sometimes it doesn’t matter how you get the result as long as you get it.
Skye Waterson: That might honestly be the theme of today's episode, because we'll see that again when we talk about the second paper.
In this study, they conducted an eight-week intervention led by two mindfulness instructors. These instructors had several years of experience, which was cool—it wasn't like they were just working off a worksheet. They had experts guiding them through these different supports.
William Curb: And they were really looking to see how feasible this is as a tool, especially with seven- and eight-year-olds, who aren’t exactly known for being mindful.
Skye Waterson: Right. If it's working, it's unlikely they were just doing this innately.
For the actual process, they had three meetings a week. They used mindfulness programs that had been used with children before, so this wasn’t the first time. They gradually increased the meditation periods over the eight weeks. For the first two weeks, it was about 30 minutes per week. In weeks three and four, it lasted 45 minutes. By the end of the course, it reached a duration of an hour and a half.
William Curb: Oof.
Skye Waterson: Which is honestly wild.
William Curb: Yeah, I couldn’t do that.
Skye Waterson: No, me neither! These kids were doing full-on meditation exercises for an hour and a half.
The sessions included things like mindful breathing, mindfulness of body parts, and mindfulness of thoughts. The three exercises were presented to the children as games. It wasn’t meant to feel like a test or something difficult; it was a game they were doing for their overall benefit.
William Curb: I thought it was very interesting that they looked at this through a "top-down" emotional regulation view. Often with ADHD, we need more of a "bottom-up" approach where we look at the body first. Not that we shouldn't look at our thoughts and patterns, but it’s interesting to tell young kids, "We’re going to look at your thoughts, and that’s going to help you affect how your body feels and your base regulation."
Skye Waterson: That is true. I recently started with a new Executive Assistant, and nothing teaches you how random your thoughts are quite like having a person you’re supposed to message every time you have a new idea.
William Curb: As we mentioned earlier, we also wanted to look at this in conjunction with another paper that has a slightly different view. That paper is called "Mindfulness versus Psychoeducation in Adult ADHD: A Randomized Control Trial."
That study looked at medication as one factor, but it also compared meditation to an educational approach. They wanted to see if group therapy has as much of an effect on ADHD as meditation does.
Skye Waterson: We’ll give you the results in a minute, because we want to talk about these papers back and forth. They are similar, though the adult study was a randomized control trial and the one with children was not.
The adult study involved 81 medication-free adults with ADHD participating in either an eight-week mindfulness program or a structured eight-week psychoeducation program. They measured them at the beginning, after eight weeks, and then again after eight months. They had a longer follow-through, but they were looking for the same thing: the effectiveness of mindfulness.
William Curb: This one didn’t have a placebo, but it did compare two different groups. I always like it when there’s a third "control" group, but you can only have so many participants.
Skye Waterson: True. In a randomized control trial, you usually want a control group. In this case, the researchers considered the psychoeducation group to be the control. That group provided information on the causes, symptoms, and treatment options for ADHD in adulthood. It’s a bit up for debate whether that counts as a true control.
William Curb: I mean, it’s clearly an intervention.
Skye Waterson: Yes! You come out knowing much more about ADHD than you did when you went in.
William Curb: The reason we wanted to compare these studies is that we often hear how important meditation is for ADHD. We don’t want to say it’s not important, but we want to highlight that there are other options.
This paper found that the psychoeducation option—where people participated in active group therapy to understand the mechanics of their own brains—worked basically as well as the meditation intervention.
Skye Waterson: Exactly. Whereas the first paper found that the meditation intervention worked significantly well for the kids. We decided to look at both because while mindfulness is clearly helpful, research is also showing that other interventions are effective too. Specifically, those "in real life" spaces where you connect with people and understand yourself better.
William Curb: One interesting thing about the psychoeducation model was that the manuals people usually go through often include Zen exercises. The researchers purposely took those out to make sure there wasn't too much overlap.
Skye Waterson: How dare you be mindful!
William Curb: Right? But I think it’s fantastic they did that, because we want to see if there is a difference. It seems like one of the most important aspects of helping your ADHD is simply working on it and listening to things about how your brain works.
Meditation definitely helped with certain things more than psychoeducation did—like mindfulness in general and the ability to quiet the mind and notice things. But those are very specific skills, so you would expect those to be helped the most.
Skye Waterson: Exactly. And there is something to be said for the fact that this is a group of people who all struggle with ADHD in a room together trying to support one another. That is awesome. In our community, people often say, "It’s great we have a group," and I’m like, "That’s cool, and it has nothing to do with me—you guys are just cool and talking to each other!" But I appreciate it.
William Curb: It is amazing how much working with others helps. You hear someone say, "Oh yeah, I do that all the time," and suddenly you realize you’re not alone. You stop judging yourself for being a "terrible person" because you can't keep your car clean when you realize everyone else in the room has a messy car and they don't care at all. It makes you feel a lot better.
Skye Waterson: 100%.
William Curb: So, are there any other things you want to say about meditation?
Skye Waterson: The academic in me feels the need to state my personal stance. I have never done very well with traditional meditation. I’m more of an "active mindfulness" person—like washing the dishes with intention.
A lot of people have different ways of getting to the same goal: engaging with your ADHD, connecting with others, being present in your body, and identifying your thoughts. If there’s one thing we can see from both papers, regardless of the outcome, it's that doing that work is really helpful.
William Curb: That’s a great point. You don’t have to do just one thing. ADHD often involves black-and-white thinking where we feel like, "This is the one thing I must do." In reality, as long as you're doing something, you're making progress.
You don’t have to meditate for three hours a day. You can just say, "I’ll try meditating for five minutes and see how it helps." Or, "I’m going to join a group to talk about my ADHD so I don’t feel so alone." You don’t have to do it all the time, but doing it sometimes makes a big difference.