Students Rising Above: Offsetting the Health and Mental Health Costs of Resilience

Recruiting now · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Internalizing Mental Health Symptoms, Allostatic Load, Health Complaints

In brief

Students who 'strive' to rise above significant stressors to achieve academic success are considered 'resilient'. However, youths' resilience in one domain (i.e. academic) can come at a cost in other domains including physical and mental health morbidities that are under-identified and under-treated. Previous research suggests that individuals from populations experiencing documented health disparities who exhibit a "striving persistent behavioral style" in the face of stress evince later health morbidities. Ironically, the same self-regulatory skills that promote academic achievement amid chronic stress can also result in physiological dysregulation that harms health and mental health. Self-regulatory processes that involve emotion suppression, experiential avoidance, and unmodulated perseverance can culminate in allostatic load which fuels health disparities and internalizing symptoms of depression and anxiety. The proposed mechanistic trial will utilize mindfulness training to permit examination of questions about the causal role of emotion regulation strategies linked to the striving persistent behavioral style in driving mental health and health morbidities among individuals from populations experiencing documented health disparities. The proposed Project STRIVE (STudents RIsing aboVE) will identify students who are academically resilient in the face of stress and will offer a tailored mindfulness intervention targeting self-regulation processes as a putative mechanism to interrupt the links between the striving persistent behavioral style and negative health outcomes. Investigators propose a multisite randomized trial randomizing 504 high achieving Black, Latinx, or Asian America/Pacific Islander students in 18 schools to receive a mindfulness intervention or an attention control condition focused on study skills. The study will: (1) test the effects of the STRIVE intervention on putative self-regulation mechanisms (emotion suppression, experiential avoidance, and unmodulated perseverance) among identified students, (2) test the effects of the STRIVE intervention on health and mental health outcomes at 12-month post-treatment, including biomarkers of allostatic load (cortisol, blood pressure, body-mass-index, waist/hip/neck circumference), health complaints, and internalizing symptoms, and (3) examine the mechanistic model linking striving persistent behavioral style and health outcomes within the STRIVE trial.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT05846282

Run by

University of California, Los Angeles

People needed

504

Starts

2023-01-09

Expected to finish

2027-06-01

Last updated by the study team

2026-03-06

Who can join

Age: 13 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Enrolled in 10th or 11th grade at a participating high school
• Black, Latinx, Asian American/Pacific Islander, or American Indian/Alaskan Native
• High achieving (e.g., GPA above 3.5 and/or in the top 20% of their grade, enrolled in advanced classes such as AP/IB/honors classes)

You may not qualify if…

• Intellectual Disability

Where it is running

• University of California — Los Angeles, California, United States (enrolling)

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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