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College life of an adolescent is a mixture of challenges and opportunities. It involves different kinds of stresses posed by the educational and personal situations. An educational institution undertakes different primary and secondary interventions to help adolescents to deal with these problems. The present study was undertaken to study the role played by mindfulness-based program in building resilience, emotional intelligence and educational adjustment of adolescents. Students voluntarily participating in an eight session course of mindfulness-based program were compared on resilience, emotional intelligence and educational adjustment during the pre and post-intervention condition. The EG was also compared to a comparable group of students from the same institution, who did not participate in the course. Mindfulness based program was found to be effective in improving the emotional intelligence and academic adjustment of the adolescents. However there was no effect seen on the participant's level of resilience.
Keywords: mindfulness, resilience, emotional intelligence, stress
College life exposes an adolescent to a number of stressors both educational as well as psychological. Educationally, an adolescent has to cope up with the difference in the teaching style, new class organization and time management along with the stress related to the subject and study-related problems. Psychologically an adolescent is also confronted with different stresses like exposure to new set of friends, choosing and participating in the different clubs and organizations within the educational institutions, dealing with other close relationships formed during the college days as well as managing break-ups of close relationships.
How one manages these stresses depends on three sets of factors Factors related to the personality and coping resources of the student, Factors related to the environment of the educational institution and the Nature of the stressor. Developing the coping resources of an adolescent is very important so as to enable them to deal with the educational and psychological problems faced during the college life.
According to Schafer (1998) some of the strategies that help adolescents to deal with the stressors during educational life are positive interpretations of difficulties as opportunities, developing a good social network for support, taking health care measures, practicing relaxation and using positive coping strategies.
Different measures are undertaken by educational institutions to help students to cope up with the high level of stress experienced by...