Development and evaluation of a mindfulness and compassion based program: An intervention for youth with psychotic experiences.

This Mindfulness with Compassion intervention is an 8-week group program with sessions delivered face to face for 1.5 hours once a week. The program will be delivered by two facilitators. The first facilitator has over 10 years experience working with youth with psychosis experiences. and has been a trained mindfulness teacher for the past 6 years. The second facilitator will may change from program to program. However, each co-facilitator will be a mental health professional who at a minimum will have sat an evidence-based mindfulness program as a participant and has a mindfulness practice. The program will be delivered in urban clinics. The first half of the program introduces participants to mindfulness primarily through experiential exercises. It involves a variety of meditations and informal practices for use in daily life that are specifically tailored to the needs of the at risk mental state group. The fourth session takes a more didactic approach exploring the core difficulties associated with the at risk mental state and mapping these onto the three emotional regulation systems used in Compassion Focused Therapy. The remaining sessions continue to build participants’ mindfulness skills with an explicit focus on developing compassion.