Recruiting

Observational Study

Sponsor:

UCLA

Code:

NCT05846282

Conditions

Internalizing Mental Health Symptoms

Allostatic Load

Health Complaints

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 13+

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Interventions

STRIVE

Study Skills

Study Details

Brief summary:

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.

Conditions

Internalizing Mental Health Symptoms

Allostatic Load

Health Complaints

Study ID

NCT05846282

Start date

Jan 9, 2023

Status verified date

Mar, 2026

Completion date

Jun, 2027

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Jun, 2027

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 13+

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Inclusion Criteria:

  • 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)

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Intellectual Disability

Study Design

Enrollment

504 participants

Anticipated

Allocation

Randomized

Intervention Model

Parallel Assignment

Primary purpose

Prevention

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

experimental: STRIVE

Based on the Learning to BREATHE (L2B) curriculum (Broderick, 2013), the STRIVE intervention is a mindfulness-based program designed to facilitate the development of emotion regulation for middle to high school students. Goals of the program include helping students understand their thoughts and feelings, learning how to use mindfulness-based skills to manage emotions, and providing opportunities for guided group mindfulness meditation practice. Delivered in twelve 60-minute group sessions, the intervention will be include the core components of the L2B program (i.e. body awareness; understanding and working with thoughts; understanding and working with feelings; integrating awareness of thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations; reducing harmful self-judgments, and integrating mindful awareness into daily life) with content framed around the needs of high achieving, college-bound students with the goal of offsetting the costs of resilience.

placebo comparator: Study Skills

The attention control condition will incorporate face-valid content to support college readiness and achievement in twelve 60- minute group sessions. Twelve sessions will cover the SOAR study skills curriculum (Kruger, 2017), including goal-setting, organization and time-management, and study skills for reading comprehension, writing papers, note-taking, and test-taking.

Interventions

STRIVE

The STRIVE intervention will include all activities and BREATHE skill training components of L2B with content framed within the needs of high achieving college-bound students who can benefit from health promoting practices to offset the costs of resilience. The intervention will include twelve 60-minute group sessions, with two sessions on each of the six core themes. Each session will include an opening mindful movement, short didactic presentation of the topic or theme of that week, group activities that illustrate the theme, guided discussion about the activity, and in-session group mindfulness meditation practice.

Study Skills

The sessions will focus on goal setting (4 sessions), organization and time management (3 sessions), and study skills for reading comprehension, writing papers, note-taking, and test-taking (4 sessions). Parallel to the final L2B session, the last meeting will include activities to share and reflect on how students plan to incorporate and sustain new skills.

Primary outcome measure

  • Change in Internalizing Symptoms over time [ Time Frame: Collected at baseline, Mid-Assessment (Week 6), Post-Assessment (Week 13), and 12 month follow up ]
  • Change in Physical Health Complaints over time on the PROMIS scale [ Time Frame: Collected at baseline, Mid-Assessment (Week 6), Post-Assessment (Week 13), and 12 month follow up ]
  • Change in Physical Health Complaints over time on the CSSI-8 [ Time Frame: Collected at baseline, Mid-Assessment (Week 6), Post-Assessment (Week 13), and 12 month follow up ]
  • Change in Hair Cortisol over time [ Time Frame: Collected at baseline, post-assessment (13 weeks), and 12 month follow up ]
  • Change in Hair Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) over time [ Time Frame: Collected at baseline, post-assessment (13 weeks), and 12 month follow up ]
  • Change in Saliva Inflammatory Marker over time [ Time Frame: Collected at baseline, Post-Assessment (13-weeks), and 12 month follow up ]
  • Change in Hip-to-waist ratio [ Time Frame: Collected at baseline, post-assessment (13 weeks), and 12 month follow up ]
  • Change in Resting Blood pressure (systolic and diastolic) mmHg (millimeters of mercury) [ Time Frame: Collected at baseline, post-assessment (13 weeks), and 12 month follow up ]
  • Change in Resting Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia bpm (beats per minute) [ Time Frame: Collected at baseline, post-assessment (13 weeks), and 12 month follow up ]
  • Change in Body Mass Index (BMI) Percentile [ Time Frame: Collected at baseline, post-assessment (13 weeks), and 12 month follow up ]
  • Change in Allostatic Load over time [ Time Frame: Collected at baseline, Post-Assessment (13-weeks), and 12 month follow up ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Anna S Lau, PhD

(310) 206-5363alau@psych.ucla.edu

Locations

University of California

Recruiting

Los Angeles, California, United States, 90049

Contacts

Anna Lau, PhD

310-206-5294alau@psych.ucla.edu

Ashley Flores, B.A.

3236304502aflores@psych.ucla.edu

Principal Investigator:

Anna Lau, PhD

More Information

Sponsor

University of California, Los Angeles

Last update posted

Mar 6, 2026

Last verified

Mar, 2026

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-09. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by University of California, Los Angeles on 2026-03-06.