ORIGINAL PAPER Assessing Mindfulness on Samples of Italian Children and Adolescents: the Validation of the Italian Version of the Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure Aristide Saggino 1,2 & Anna Bartoccini 1,3 & Maria Rita Sergi 1 & Roberta Romanelli 1 & Antonella Macchia 1,3 & Marco Tommasi 1,2 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017 Abstract Mindfulness could be defined as the state of con- sciousness with which one pays attention at the present mo- ment 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 character- istics 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 confirmato- ry 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 intel- ligence and quality of life, and significant negative correla- tions with somatizing symptoms. Keywords Mindfulness . CAMM . Confirmatory factor analysis . Children and adolescents . Measurement invariance Introduction Mindfulness could be defined as the state of consciousness with which one pays attention at the present moment in a non-judgmental and intentional way (Kabat-Zinn 1990). Several studies have shown the efficacy of mindfulness in treatments of psychological diseases such as depression, anx- iety, and eating disorders (Baer 2003; Coelho et al. 2007; Hofmann et al. 2010) and as an integrating part of psycholog- ical therapies, such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT; Hayes et al. 1999) as well as dialectical behavior ther- apy (DBT; Linehan 1993). Previous research regarding the psychological use of mindfulness has been mainly focused on an adult population (Baer 2003; Grossman et al. 2004) and has shown the relevance of mindfulness-based interven- tions for the reduction of psychological diseases. Mindfulness has a central role in increasing one’ s psychological and phys- ical well-being. There is evidence of the efficacy of mindful- ness on psychological diseases in children and adolescents. Some studies have shown a reduction of anxiety symptoms and of binge-eating behavior in a sample of clinical children (Salbach-Andrae et al. 2008; Semple et al. 2005). Recent re- search has demonstrated that young individuals, with a high level of awareness, have fewer depressive symptoms, less perceived stress, and less anger (Black et al. 2012; Brown et al. 2011). In the literature, the importance of a valid measure of mindfulness which is necessary to determine the skills should be developed in order to obtain either an increase of psychological well-being or a fewer number of psycho- logical diseases. Several scales exist for mindfulness * Aristide Saggino a.saggino@unich.it 1 School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy 2 Center for the Study of Personality, Naples, Italy 3 Center of Clinical Psychology, Pescara, Italy Mindfulness DOI 10.1007/s12671-017-0712-3