STUDY PROTOCOL article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fped.2025.1459434
The effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for children on anxiety, attentional control, and emotion regulation in children: A Study protocol
Provisionally accepted
Habibeh Kholghi1Khadijeh Abolmaali Alhosseini1Fahimeh Dehghani2
Randye J Semple3
Mojtaba Habibi Asgarabad4*- 1Islamic Azad University North Tehran Branch, Tehran, Alborz, Iran
- 2Yazd University, Yazd, Yazd, Iran
- 3Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States
- 4Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Introduction: Childhood stressors and adverse experiences can increase the likelihood of children developing mental disorders. The development of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for children (MBCT-C) offers opportunities to improve emotional resiliency and reduce these children’s vulnerabilities. The current study introduces the framework of a future clinical trial that seeks to examine the level of satisfaction and the efficacy of MBCT-C on anxiety, attentional control, and emotional regulation in children. Method: This research protocol outlines a quasi-experimental design that compares MBCT-C with an active control group. The intervention group will participate in a 12-session MBCT-C program, while the active control group will receive a 12-session program of life skills training (LST). Eighty children aged between 8 and 12 years will be randomly assigned to the intervention or the control group. Data using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale for Children (MAAS-C), the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC), the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAI-CH), and the Attentional Control Scale for Children (ACS-C) will be collected at three times: baseline, post-intervention, and six months following the intervention. The Mindfulness Program Satisfaction Questionnaire (MPSQ) will assess participant satisfaction with the program. The effectiveness of MBCT-C will be evaluated using a conditional mixed regression model in STATA-18. Discussion: Providing a research protocol to conduct a clinical trial on MBCT-C before the intervention phase provides a precise evaluation of the goals and hypotheses, study method, assessment tools, and treatment outcomes.
Keywords: Conceptualization, investigation, project administration, writingoriginal draft preparation, review and editing, reviewed and approved the final draft. Mojtaba Habibi Asgarabad: Conceptualization, methodology, resources
Received: 04 Jul 2024; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kholghi, Abolmaali Alhosseini, Dehghani, Semple and Habibi Asgarabad. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mojtaba Habibi Asgarabad, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.