Friend in Me

Yearly, millions of children are diagnosed with mental health conditions. However, as the need for age-appropriate interventions and mental health services increases, the amount of available and accessible resources for families has failed to meet the growing demand. This study evaluated an intervention program developed to help address this deficit and provide children and their caregivers with a developmentally appropriate intervention targeted at improving well-being over time. A Friend in Me: A Self-Compassion Training for Children and their Caregivers is based on the trademark Mindful Self-Compassion program developed by Kristin Neff, Ph.D., and Christopher K. Germer, Ph.D., but focuses on children in middle childhood, ages 7 to 12. Until now, there has been little research on the impact of self-compassion training with children in this age group. However, preliminary evidence from research on adolescents suggests that intervention programs that include mindfulness and self-compassion have a significant positive impact on long-term prevention of adverse child outcomes and on children's abilities to regulate and speak about their emotions. The present study utilized a mixed-methods embedded design where quantitative data were collected and analyzed at two time points, pre-test and post-test and qualitative data were collected and analyzed once following the completion of the Friend in Me intervention. This design was implemented to gather a deeper understanding of participants' perspectives on program feasibility and acceptability, and to help examine the intervention outcomes shown in the quantitative data collection. Quantitative results indicated statistically significant increases in children's levels of self-compassion and in positive parent reports of parent-child relationship quality; all other variables did not show statistically significant results from pre to post-test. Additionally, attendance and retention data were analyzed. Findings indicated that the Friend in Me intervention was a feasible and acceptable training program for children in middle childhood and their caregivers. Qualitative results also highlighted five themes for feasibility and acceptability, 1) training need, 2) favorite elements of the training, 3) enhanced understanding of the concepts, 4) self-compassion implemented in daily life, and 5) suggestions for change. Qualitative results also found two overarching themes representing participant's experiences which were defined as 1) mutual learning and 2) increased positive perceptions of parent-child relationship quality. Quantitative and qualitative results were analyzed together to generate deeper insights to inform future studies more fully. Feasibility studies are a crucial step in determining whether a larger more controlled intervention study to test for efficacy is justified. Additionally, feasibility studies help refine the research design and intervention protocol. Findings from the current feasibility study indicated promising results that the Friend in Me intervention should be further explored in a larger controlled study to gain more information on how this intervention compares to basic mindfulness training and other social-emotional learning intervention programs. Moreover, the study results ultimately highlighted a resource available to children and their caregivers who may be struggling to find available and accessible help when it comes to managing and learning more about mental health in this age group.