Health Intervention Essay

The general understanding is that a person’s state of being – our health – is what essentially drives our behaviors, decisions, and our relationships. For this reason, playing close attention to adolescent students’ well-being is crucial in order to ensure that they progress and develop into a healthy state of being, especially in the influential school environment. So, what is important to conceptualize, is that adolescence is a transitional phase of growth and development from childhood to adulthood, commonly associated with the ages of ten to twenty-five. To emphasize, adolescent environments are rapidly changing and with that their social, emotional, mental well-being which triggers the impactful effects on, an individual’s overall health.

Often the concern of consumers has been in reference to the displeasure with side-effects, escalating rates of prescriptions, and uncertainties in its long-term effectiveness of eliminating stress (Rubia, 2008). On the other hand, meditation can be used as either a complementary or alternative form of intervention for mental disorders. However, the repercussions of attempting the implementation of this kind of intervention, principally in the educational system, requires a wider understanding of its advantages and disadvantages. The purpose of meditation is to reduce and/or eliminate unwholesome thought processes, by training the mind to become more aware, open, and relaxed. Similarly, Mindfulness Meditation involves practitioners "focussed attention on internal and external sensory stimuli with ‘mindfulness', a specific non-judgemental awareness of present-moment stimuli without cognitive elaboration" (Rubia, 2008). The variety of techniques in meditative practices, essentially train the mind in the settling of our thinking processes which than deepen individuals physical and mental calm while enhancing awareness and clarity in the mind and body. Usually, it involves narrowing attention to a specific stimulus - i.e., breath - in the present moment and filtering sensations, thoughts, and emotions from a non-judgemental perspective. So, students who actively engage in Mindfulness Meditation will develop skills and enhance their functions in areas such as concentration, self-monitoring, and cognitive interference control (Rubia, 2008). More than that, Mindfulness Meditation alters mediator’s physiology as research suggest, it affects the autonomic nervous system by triggering a hypo-metabolic state. Uniquely, the human nervous system is subdivided by the sympathetic nervous system known as our 'fight or flight' response to certain stimuli.