With its roots in Buddhist traditions, is the process of acknowledging and accepting the experience of the present moment; your thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, without judgment and with a sense of curiosity rather than reactivity. Its concepts contrast rumination, hyper-reactivity and negative affect (Hofmann, Sawyer, Witt, & Oh, 2010). Mindfulness can be practised in numerous ways and has been shown to have a positive effect on mental health and wellbeing by enhancing self-control, increasing memory and regulating emotions and stress (Greenberg & Harris, 2012). Mindfulness is taught in Dialectical behaviour therapy as a life skill and is used to treat trauma (Follette, Palm, & Pearson, 2006) to moderate behavioural dysfunction, while providing skills for self-monitoring to aid emotion regulation (Harnett, Reid, Loxton, & Lee, 2016). It is particularly effective in adolescents and young people due to factors unique to this age group, such as the greater malleability of the still-developing brain and increased susceptibility to stress (Fuhrmann, Knoll & Blakemore, 2015).
