Efficacy of brief behavioral and sleep hygiene education with mindfulness intervention on sleep, social jetlag and mental health in adolescence: a pilot study.

Objectives: Sleep is often compromised in adolescents, affecting their health and quality of life. This pilot-study was conducted to evaluate if implementing brief-behavioral and sleep-hygiene education with mindfulness intervention may positively affect sleep-health in adolescents.
Method: Participants in this community-based non-randomized cohort-study volunteered for intervention (IG)- or control-group (CG). Sleep was recorded during regular school-schedule for 3-school-nights and 2-non-school-nights with an FDA-cleared/EU-Medical Device Regulation (CE-2862) compliant home sleep test, and Questionnaires were utilized to evaluate chronotype, sleepiness, insomnia-, anxiety- and depression-symptoms. The four-week intervention included sleep-hygiene education, mindfulness- and breathing-practices for one-hour, twice weekly. Data was collected during the last-week of February and first two-weeks of March 2023 and repeated after intervention.
Results: Fifty-five participants completed the study, IG (86%) and CG (77%). Average age was 17.3-years and prevalence of severe social-jetlag (SJL) 72%. Participants who quit participation (n = 10) after baseline data-collection all females (3-IG/7-CG) in comparison to participants who completed the study were sleepier than the IG and CG (+ 2.6-p = 0.04; + 3.8-p = 0.001), with more symptoms of insomnia- (+ 3.8-p = 0.002; + 4.7-p < 0.0001), and depression (+ 16.7-p < 0.0001; + 19.6-p < 0.0001), and report being later-chronotypes, (-18.2, p < 0.0001;-13.1, p < 0.0001). On average the IG advanced sleep-onset (32-min; p = 0.030), decreased SJL (37-min; p = 0.011) and increased total sleep time (TST, 29-min; p = 0.088) compared to the CG. Average sleep duration did not differ significantly comparing IG and CG after intervention. Stratifying participants with severe SJL (> 2-h) at baseline; 1) responders (61%) advanced sleep-onset on non-school-nights (96-min) and decreased SJL (103-min; p < 0.001) 2) non-responders (39%) increased sleep-duration on school-nights (36-min) and non-school-nights (63-min) but maintained severe-SJL.
Conclusion: Teacher-lead sleep-education and mindfulness program can improve TST and SJL in adolescence.
Competing Interests: Declarations. Ethics statement: The study protocol was approved by the National Institute of Bioethics Committee (VSN-22–174) and recruitment procedures met the local Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Informed consent was obtained from all individuals participating in the study. All procedures performed during the study were in accordance with ethical standards of the institutional committee and the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Conflict of interest: S.M is Chief Medical Officer for MyCardio LLC and has partial ownership. SleepImage is the brand name of MyCardio LLC, a privately held entity. MyCardio LLC is a licensee of the Cardiopulmonary coupling (CPC) algorithms, a method to phenotype sleep and sleep apnea, from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA. H.H is Director of Research & Development for MyCardio LLC. SleepImage is the brand name of MyCardio LLC, a privately held entity. All other authors declare no conflict of interest. Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process: During the preparation of this work the authors DID NOT use generative AI, AI-assisted or Large Language Models (LLMs) technologies in the writing process nor does the SleepImage technology utilized in this study utilize AI.
(© 2025. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)