Effectiveness of mindfulness therapy on anxiety and emotion regulation of first-grade high school gifted students

Cognitive and homework assignments in gifted schools may hurt the psychological and emotional processes of gifted students. Therefore, the present study was conducted aiming to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness therapy on the first-grade high school gifted students' anxiety and emotion regulation.

The research method was experimental with pretest, posttest, control group and two-month period follow-up design. The statistical population of the present study included all first-grade high school gifted students in the city of KhorramAbad in academic year 2017-18. Purposive sampling and random replacement were used in the present study in a way that 30 students were selected from first high school students in the city of KhorramAbad through purposive sampling method and randomly placed into experiment and control groups. The experiment group received interventions in 10 seventy-five-minute sessions during three months. The utilized tools in the present study included Anxiety Questionnaire (Beck et al, 1988) and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross and John, 2003). The data from the study were analyzed through repeated measurement ANOVA via SPSS23</sub>.

The results showed that the mindfulness therapy has significantly influenced the gifted students' anxiety and emotion regulation (P<0.001). Moreover, the results showed that this therapy was able to significantly maintain its effect in time (P<0.001). The effect of mindfulness therapy on anxiety and emotion regulation of gifted students was 86% and 74% respectively.

According to the findings of the present study, it can be concluded that mindfulness therapy concomitant with employing techniques such as thoughts, emotions and mindful behavior can influence anxiety and emotion regulation. Therefore mindfulness therapy can be applied as an efficient therapy to decrease anxiety and increase and emotional regulation in gifted student.