Strengthening Children’s Mental Health, Learning, and Creativity
Support Rigorous Research on Mind-Body Training for Children at UCLA
Anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and academic and social pressure affect a growing number of children. Conventional responses often add more to a child’s schedule — more tutoring, more programs, more clinical services. A complementary approach is to strengthen the internal skills children already have the capacity to develop: focused attention, emotion regulation, and self-awareness.
Researchers at UCLA are launching a controlled study to test whether a structured mind-body program can measurably improve children’s mental health, cognitive skills, and creativity. Your support helps make this research possible.
About the Study
This study will evaluate a structured program for children ages 8-12. Using a randomized controlled trial – the gold-standard design for establishing whether an intervention causes an effect – the research will measure outcomes across four domains:
- Mental health: anxiety and emotional regulation
- Cognitive skills: memory, attention, and reasoning
- Creativity: divergent thinking and cognitive flexibility
- Decision-making: judgment and self-regulation under everyday demands
The trial will take place at a school in LA and includes standardized assessments, a structured intervention, a comparison (control) condition, and follow-up analysis. The study is designed to generate high-quality evidence to inform future school-based programs. All procedures are conducted in accordance with UCLA’s research ethics requirements and Institutional Review Board oversight (UCLA IRB-25-0738).
The Program
The program teaches children evidence-informed skills through age-appropriate practices:
- Mindfulness meditation and breathwork
- Attention and awareness training
- Confidence- and self-regulation building activities
These practices are designed to help children build emotional resilience, strengthen focus and self-awareness, reduce stress and anxiety, and support flexible, creative thinking.
Why This Research Matters
A substantial and growing body of evidence indicates that mind-body practices can support children’s attention and well-being. However, rigorous, controlled studies in school-aged children remain limited, and few have examined effects across mental health, cognition, and creativity together. This study addresses that gap. It will:
- Generate controlled evidence on the effects of mind-body training in children
- Inform future education models that support the whole child
- Assess scalable, low-cost approaches to supporting children’s mental health
What Makes This Study Distinctive
- A rigorous randomized controlled design to examine an understudied intervention
- An interdisciplinary approach integrating neuroscience, psychology, and education
- Outcomes measured across multiple validated domains rather than a single endpoint
How Your Donation Helps
Your contribution directly supports:
- Participant compensation for children and families
- Data collection, including standardized cognitive assessments
- Testing materials and tools
- Program delivery and control group implementation
- Publication and dissemination of findings
Total funding goal: $20,000
Every contribution – of any size – brings this research closer to completion.
Help Shape the Future of Education
This study is part of a broader effort to understand childhood ability more fully – not as something captured by test scores alone, but as a combination of attention, emotion regulation, creativity, and sound judgment. The goal is practical: to determine what works, for whom, and how it can be delivered at scale.
With rigorous evidence, schools and families can make better-informed decisions about how to support children’s development. This research is a concrete step toward that aim.
Donate Now
Every gift matters. Make a tax-deductible donation today:
https://giving.ucla.edu/campaign/donate.aspx?Fund=19961C
Questions, Partnerships, or In-Kind Donations
We welcome donors, collaborators, and advocates. Please reach out to learn more about supporting or expanding this work.
Principal Investigator: Dara Ghahremani, PhD
Email: darag@ucla.edu.