Key result
Breath-focused HRV biofeedback modestly reduces anxiety and social stress in primary school students.
Why the study?
Primary school students experience high anxiety and stress, and conscious slow breathing is an accessible emotional regulation strategy that could help reduce their anxiety and physiological and social stress.
Does a breath-focused HRV biofeedback intervention reduce anxiety and social stress in primary school children?
Does a breath-focused HRV biofeedback intervention reduce anxiety and social stress in primary school children?
Standardized Mean Difference: 0.42
Absolute Event Rate: 13.7% vs 12.79%
p-value: p=<0.001
A breath-focused HRV biofeedback intervention is effective in reducing anxiety and social stress among primary school children.
May support school-based anxiety reduction; hypothesis-generating and requires larger RCTs before practice change.
Primary school students suffer from high levels of anxiety and stress. Having emotional regulation abilities can help them to manage challenging emotional situations. Conscious and slow breathing is a physiological, emotional regulation strategy that is feasible for primary school students to learn. Following Polyvagal Theory and PMER Theory, this research presents the results of a breath-focused heart rate variability biofeedback intervention. The intervention aimed to reduce anxiety and physiological and social stress in primary school children. A total of 585 students (46.4% girls and 53.6% boys) from the same public school, aged between 7 and 12 years (M = 8.51; SD = 1.26), participated in this study. To assess the impact of training, a mixed design was used with two groups (Treatment and Control groups), two evaluation phases (Pretest and Post-test), and three educational cycles (first, second and third cycles). To examine heart rate variability, emWave software was used and anxiety and social stress were measured by the BASC II test. The results showed that after the intervention, the students learned to breathe consciously. Moreover, they reduced their levels of anxiety (M(SD)pretest = 12.81(2.22) vs. M(SD)posttest = 13.70(1.98)) and stress (M(SD)pretest = 12.20(1.68) vs. M(SD)posttest = 12.90(1.44)). The work also discusses the limitations and benefits of this type of intervention in primary schools.
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Ruiz et al. (2022) studied Anxiety and social stress (n=585). Breath-focused heart rate variability biofeedback vs. No intervention (control group) was evaluated on Anxiety score (BASC-S2, higher score indicates lower anxiety) (d = 0.42, p=<0.001). A 5-week breath-focused heart rate variability biofeedback intervention significantly reduced anxiety (d = 0.42) and social stress (d = 0.40) levels in primary school students compared to a control group.
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