Exploring compassion: A meta-analysis of the association between self-compassion and psychopathology

Abstract

Compassion has emerged as an important construct in studies of mental health and psychological therapy. Although an increasing number of studies have explored relationships between compassion and different facets of psychopathology there has as yet been no systematic review or synthesis of the empirical literature. We conducted a systematic search of the literature on compassion and mental health. We identified 20 samples from 14 eligible studies. All studies used the Neff Self Compassion Scale (Neff 2003, a). We employed meta-analysis to explore associations between self-compassion and psychopathology using random effects analyses of Fisher"s Z correcting for attenuation arising from scale reliability. We found a large effect size for the relationship between compassion and psychopathology of r= -0.54 (95%CI = -0.57 to -0.51; Z=-34.02; p<.0001). Heterogeneity was significant in the analysis. There was no evidence of significant publication bias. Compassion is an important explanatory variable in understanding mental health and resilience. Future work is needed to develop the evidence base for compassion in psychopathology, and explore correlates of compassion and psychopathology.

Grief rumination mediates the association between self-compassion and psychopathology in relatives of missing persons

“…We found moderate correlations ( r s  = −.35 to −.46) between self-compassion and psychopathology levels; correlations appear to be lower than the overall large correlation between psychopathology and self-compassion ( r  = −.54) found in a meta-analysis (MacBeth & Gumley, 2012). These previous large effects were predominantly based on non-clinical (student) samples.…”

“…Strengthening of a self-compassionate attitude is an important aspect of mindfulness-based treatments (MacBeth & Gumley, 2012). Mindfulness and self-compassion are both rooted in Buddhist traditions and conceptually related.…”

“…Because there is evidence that self-compassion is equally related to different types of symptoms (e.g. depression, anxiety, and stress; MacBeth & Gumley, 2012) we had no hypotheses with regard to the relative strength of the associations of self-compassion with PG, depression, and PTS levels. Second, we tested the prediction that the associations between self-compassion and post-loss psychopathology would be mediated by grief rumination (Hypothesis 2; see Figure 1).…”

The Effectiveness of a Pilot Self-Compassion Program on Well Being Components

“…Similarly, self compassion seems to be related to lower levels of negative mind-states, such as anxiety and depression (Barnard & Curry, 2011;Yang, 2016), stress, rumination, thought suppression, perfectionism and shame (Macbeth & Gumley, 2012;Neff & Lamb, 2009). These results strongly indicate the relationship between psychopathology and low levels of self compassion.…”

A Prospective Examination of Self-Compassion as a Predictor of Depressive Symptoms in Children and Adolescents

“…Neff and McGehee (2010) proposed three components of self-compassion: (1) self-kindness, which refers to "the ability to treat oneself with care and understanding rather than harsh self-judgment," (2) common humanity, which refers to "recognizing that imperfection is a shared aspect of the human experience rather than feeling isolated by one's failures," and (3) mindfulness, which refers to "holding one's present-moment experience in balanced perspective rather than exaggerating the dramatic story-line of one's suffering" (p. 226). A growing number of studies confirm the inverse relationship between self-compassion and depressive symptoms (Macbeth & Gumley, 2012). Unfortunately, the vast majority of this research has been conducted with adult and college-aged samples.…”