About 60% of U.S. teachers report high levels of work-related stress. Teaching is stressful in Denmark as well, where one in four teachers report feeling frequently or constantly stressed during the last two weeks. In 2017, the Danish Parliament allocated funds to train lower secondary school teachers to teach mindfulness to their students.

The training was one aspect of implementing a nation-wide school-based mindfulness initiative, broadly aligned with similar efforts such as the British MYRIAD project to improve student wellbeing.

Axelsen et al. [Social Science and Medicine] evaluated the effect of this teacher-focused mindfulness training program on perceived stress levels over one year. 

Schools in five Danish geographic regions where randomly assigned to mindfulness or waitlist control conditions. Ninety-seven teachers in 54 schools were assigned to mindfulness training, and 94 teachers in 56 schools were assigned to the control group. Ninety-two percent of the teachers were women, and their average age was 45 years.

Teacher recruitment combined website and social media advertising with invitations sent to schools. Each school could assign up to three teachers to the mindfulness training program or waitlist control. 

The year-long teacher training program included three components: a standard 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course, a four-day residential course on the school-based mindfulness curriculum called “.b”, and three two-day seminars (six days total) of additional training on mindfulness-related teaching competencies and implementation practices. 

Teachers completed self-report questionnaires at baseline, 3, 6, and 12 months. The primary outcome was change in perceived stress scores from baseline to 12 months, measured with the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale. Only 44% of the teachers assigned to the intervention completed the full training program. At 12 months, 59% of intervention teachers and 69% of control teachers provided follow-up data. Analyses were conducted on an intent-to-treat basis using mixed-effects models.

At 12 months, teachers in the mindfulness group showed an average reduction in stress of over two points compared to baseline, while the control group remained essentially unchanged (Cohen’s d=0.38). An earlier publication on this cohort showed a 1.7-point improvement in stress at 3 months and a 2.1-point improvement at 6 months. 

The Danish trial suggests that training schoolteachers to teach mindfulness may produce a small overall reduction in perceived stress that persists over their year of their involvement as teachers transitioned through the rest of the training. However, participating teachers were self-selected and likely more interested in mindfulness from the outset, and many did not complete the full training or the final assessment.

Taken together with other large-scale British and European trials of school-based mindfulness trials, these results fit a broader pattern of small or null benefits for teachers or students, rather than large, transformative effects.

Reference:

Axelsen, H. L., Müller, A. G., Fjorback, L. O., Goetzsche, K., Nielsen, H. B., & Juul, L. (2026). Effectiveness of a one-year teacher training program in delivering school-based mindfulness on schoolteachers’ mental health: A nationwide cluster-randomized trial. Social Science & Medicine.

Link to study