Effectiveness of Arts-Based Mindfulness Intervention on Anxiety of Students with Learning Disability

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of art-based mindfulness intervention on anxiety of students with learning disabilities. The present study was an experimental one with a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The statistical population of this study was students with learning disabilities who had referred to learning disability centers in Shiraz city in 2020-2021 were 30 of them (13 girls and 17 boys) selected by convenience sampling method and randomly divided into experimental (7 girls and 8 boys) and control (6 girls and 9 boys) groups. Then multidimensional scale of children's anxiety (MASC) was administered as a pre-test in both groups and also art-based mindfulness intervention was performed on experimental group for 12 sessions. Immediately after the intervention, the mentioned test was administered again as a post-test and one month after the intervention administered as a follow-up. Data was analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance in spss-25 software. The results showed that there was a significant difference in anxiety scores between the two groups. As a result, art-based mindfulness intervention has significantly reduced anxiety in students with learning disabilities. Therefore, performing arts-based mindfulness intervention program is suggested to improve anxiety of children with learning disabilities.