Effectiveness of mindfulness meditation technique on reducing perceived stress among adolescents in selected school at puducherry

Adolescence is a stage of ‘Storms and Stresses’. The period of adolescence is of ultimate important in human’s life. In this period a person gets physical, mental and emotional maturity. Adolescents are faced with challenging issues including the puberty, identity formation and transition from childhood to adulthood. Unmanaged stress can cause adolescents with potentially significant health impacts and higher risk for behavioral problems, suicide and risky sexual behavior, smoking, substance abuse, school dropout, self-harm, and poor eating habits. So the practice of mindfulness meditation technique can help the adolescents to reduce stress and improves mental health of adolescents. Quasi-experimental research design with one group pre-test and post-test was adopted. Sixty samples including male and female adolescents in New Modern Vidya Mandir Higher secondary school were selected by using simple random sampling technique (lottery method). The data were collected through interview method and pre-test data collection was done by using Cohen Perceived Stress Scale. Mindfulness meditation technique was administered for the duration of 15-30 min daily for 21 days and the post-test was conducted. The data were analyzed by using paired ‘t’ test and Kruskal Wallis and Mann Whitney test. The study showed that the post-test level of stress of adolescents mean score (6.12) are significantly less than the pre-test level of stress mean score (18.98) by using paired ‘t’ test (21.079).This study reveals that mindfulness meditation technique has highly statistical significance in reduction of stress among adolescents at P-value <0.0001*. This study revealed that the level of perceived stress was high among adolescents. The post-test level of stress score was lower than the pre-test score after administration of mindfulness meditation technique. Thus, this study proves that mindfulness meditation was effective in reducing perceived stress among adolescents.