Isler, Robert B.McAllister, Suzanne Maree2020-11-122020-11-122020McAllister, S. M. (2020). Just take a second to breathe: Empowering youth through mindfulness at Atawhai 2019 (Thesis, Master of Applied Psychology (MAppPsy)). The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10289/13947https://hdl.handle.net/10289/13947This research was an evaluation of The Kindness Institute’s 2019 Atawhai programme. It examined the effects that exposure to mindfulness-based skills, Māori cultural practices, mentoring, and the creative arts had on a cohort of marginalised youth. Specifically, the research aimed to determine (1) if learning mindfulness-based skills helped the youth to positively deal with challenges, (2) what effect learning mindfulness-based skills has on their positive and negative emotions and (3) were youth empowered to share the skills they learned within their homes, families and communities to enable a wider benefit from the mindfulness-based skills. Participants included 12 youth who attended the Atawhai programme during 2019. They all completed shortened versions of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), Adolescent Self-Regulatory Inventory (ASRI), The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ), Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) and Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) at seven stages over a nine-month period from March 2019 to December 2019. Self-report debrief questionnaires and researcher observations were recorded during the October 2019 residential intensive of 5 days. Inferential statistics (repeated measures ANOVA and post-hoc paired t-tests) indicated a statistically significant increase in positive emotions (p<0.01) with a large effect 1.07 over the duration of the evaluation period from March 2019 to December 2019; the October 2019 intensive, p<0.01, d=1.37; and the April 2019 intensive, p<0.01, d=1.89. Statistically significant decreases in anxiety (p<0.01) with a large effect d=1.99 were indicated over the duration of the evaluation period from March 2019 to December 2019; the October 2019 intensive, p=0.07, d=0.57; and the April 2019 intensive, p≤0.01, d=1.19. Self-report measures indicated the youth; found the mindfulness-based skills beneficial, preferred a particular skill over others, and found their mentors supportive in helping them incorporate the skills into their daily lives. Youth reported they had continued their mindfulness-based practice outside Atawhai and were regularly sharing the skills within their homes, families and communities including their schools. These findings suggest the Atawhai programme has a profound and significant positive effect on the wellbeing of the young people it serves.application/pdfenAll items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.MindfulnessSelf-RegulationHappinessAnxietySelf-compassionYouthEvaluationThesis2020-11-10