Hope collection

Can developing nonattachment during adolescence improve long-term mental health?

Practical Tips/Advice for practitioners

• Encourage flexible thinking:
  Help adolescents understand that emotions, relationships, and setbacks are temporary. Teach them to expect change and adjust their expectations. Flexibility lowers distress and helps them move on from disappointment.

• Practice mindfulness regularly:
  Incorporate short, age-appropriate mindfulness practices into daily routines—at school or home. Mindfulness strengthens awareness and reduces the grip of unhelpful thoughts, building emotional resilience.

• Talk openly about change:
  Make impermanence a normal topic. Use real-life examples—friendships shifting, interests evolving—to show that change is natural. When teens see clinging to fixed ideas as unrealistic, they’re less likely to struggle when life moves on.

• Focus on growth, not perfection:
  Give feedback that highlights effort, progress, and learning—not just results. This helps teens stay engaged without becoming attached to success or afraid of failure.

• Build emotional agility:
  Create programs that teach teens how to name, notice, and shift their emotional responses. When they learn to relate to thoughts and feelings without being ruled by them, they gain lasting psychological strength.

Abstract

Objectives
Nonattachment involves a flexible way of relating to ideas without clinging to them and is hypothesised to be beneficial to mental health. However, no longitudinal research has examined this hypothesis. We conducted a three-wave longitudinal study to examine the extent that nonattachment was an antecedent to improvements in mental health.

Method
A large sample of students (males = 1162; females = 1186) from 16 high schools completed the Nonattachment Scale (NAS-7) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) over 3 years in Grades 10, 11, and 12.

Results
Nonattachment predicted approximately 4.5% of the variance in mental health measured 1 year later. Supporting an antecedent model, structural equation modeling revealed that nonattachment reliably predicted reductions in poor mental health from Grades 10 to 11 (β = −.091, p = .006) and Grades 11 to 12 (β = −.121, p < .001). The consequence model of poor mental health leading to lower nonattachment was only supported in the Grades 10 to 11(β = −.127, p < .001).

Conclusions
Nonattachment protects against the development of poor mental health. Further research into interventions that enhance nonattachment in youth is warranted.

Full paper access

Ciarrochi, Joseph, Sahdra, Baljinder K., Yap, Keong and Dicke, Theresa. (2020). The role of nonattachment in the development of adolescent mental health : A three-year longitudinal study. Mindfulness. 11(9), pp. 2131-2139.

Contact the researcher

Professor Joseph Ciarrochi
joseph.ciarrochi@acu.edu.au

Learn more about Professor Joseph Ciarrochi’s research