Assessing Mindfulness on Samples of Italian Children and Adolescents: the Validation of the Italian Version of the Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure

Mindfulness could be defined as the state of consciousness with which one pays attention at the present moment in a non-judgmental and in a non-intentional way. Several studies have shown the efficacy of mindfulness in treatments relating to psychological diseases. For this reason, mindfulness has become an integrated element of cognitive-behavior therapies. There is a scarcity of validated scales of mindfulness in children or adolescent populations, especially in Italy. The aim is to investigate the psychometric characteristics of the Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure (CAMM) on an Italian sample of 941 children and adolescents (from 9 to 18 years). In addition, we tested the convergence of the CAMM with measures of emotional intelligence (EQ-i), of quality of life (YQLI), and of somatizing symptoms (CSI). Statistical analyses showed that the original version of the CAMM with 10 items does not fit in with the data obtained on the Italian children and adolescents samples, especially for the bad psychometric properties of two items. When these items were removed, the new version of the CAMM with eight items provided more reliable measures. The confirmatory factor analysis consolidated the uni-dimensional structure of the CAMM. In addition, the new version of the CAMM showed a strong measurement invariance between males and females, significant positive correlations with emotional intelligence and quality of life, and significant negative correlations with somatizing symptoms