Current Research - CHRCO
MBA is currently partnering with Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland (CHRCO) on a pilot project at Camp Sweeney (Alameda’s long-term youth detention camp) that utilizes MBA’s intervention as a prescription for anxiety and insomnia for youth in detention.
Dr. Tomás Magaña, the Medical Director of the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center, initiated the project with MBA in response to the large number of anxiety and insomnia complaints his office was receiving from detained youth. The idea was to use a mindfulness-based intervention as an alternative to Benadryl and other common drug prescriptions.
To our knowledge, this partnership represents the first instance nationally of adolescent physicians in the probation system writing a prescription for mindfulness training as a way to counteract conditions that have been traditionally treated with pharmaceutical interventions.
We began data collection in the Spring 2010 using several quantitative self report measures, including the Overall Anxiety Severity & Interference Scale (OASIS) and the Insomnia Symptom Questionnaire (ISQ-13). We are also conducting in-depth qualitative interviews of program participants.
