A Randomized Controlled Trial of a 21-Day Mindfulness-Based Intervention for Teachers Delivered via a Mobile Instant Messaging App

Objectives: Teachers play an important role in schoolchildren’s lives. Yet, the ever-increasing work demands may compromise teachers’ wellbeing and their ability to carry out their duties effectively. A 21-day self-guided mindfulness-based intervention was developed and delivered via a mobile instant messaging app to foster teachers’ wellbeing. A randomized controlled trial was conducted to evaluate the acceptability and efficacy of the intervention for teachers in Hong Kong. Method: Participants were 254 Chinese teachers (87.5% women) randomly assigned to the mindfulness-based intervention (n = 138) or waitlist control (n = 116). Assessments of mindfulness, teaching stress, anxiety, depression, and subjective wellbeing were collected at three time points, including pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, and 30-day follow-up. Results: Linear mixed models revealed significant interaction effect on mindfulness, anxiety, and subjective wellbeing, after controlling for gender and years of teaching. The interaction effect on teaching stress and depression was however non-significant. Follow-up mediation analysis indicated mindfulness at immediate post-intervention mediated the relation between the condition (i.e., intervention vs control) and mental health at 30-day follow-up, including anxiety and subjective wellbeing. Conclusions: This study demonstrates how a self-guided mindfulness-based intervention may have mental health benefits for teachers. The enhanced flexibility of this self-guided intervention was a key appeal to teaching professionals with busy schedules. Such a feature may be fundamental in the design of widely used applications in the future. Preregistration: This study is not preregistered.