09/06/2026
Ottawa, Ontario — Tuesday June 9, 2026
A growing body of research suggests mindfulness could play a role in concussion recovery.
Mindfulness‑based interventions (MBIs) are known to improve stress, mood, and attention—many of the same challenges faced after a concussion injury. At the same time, app‑based mindfulness programs can improve mental health outcomes in general populations and offer a more accessible way to deliver mindfulness training.
What’s missing is a way to bring these together, to see if using digital tools to deliver MBIs can help individuals recover after a concussion.
“What’s exciting about this work is that teens and families were willing to engage with a mindfulness-based intervention delivered entirely through their smartphones. Digital tools offer a unique opportunity to make evidence-informed support more accessible after concussion, and this study provides an important foundation for testing whether these interventions can improve recovery outcomes at a larger scale.” – Dr. Andrée-Anne Ledoux
A study led by Andrée–Anne Ledoux and a team at the CHEO Research Institute designed a digital mindfulness intervention and conducted a Health Canada feasibility study to test whether this approach could work in practice. Researchers enrolled 99 teens aged 12 to 17, introducing a smartphone–based mindfulness program within the first week after a concussion injury.
They found strong uptake and retention, with nearly 90% completing the study and most participants reporting positively on the program. These results show that delivering MBIs through a smartphone is a viable, practical strategy to reach youth—setting the stage for larger studies to test whether app-based MBIs can improve recovery for teens after a concussion injury.