The Role of Self-Compassion in Buffering Symptoms of Depression in the General Population

Abstract

Self-compassion, typically operationalized as the total score of the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS; Neff, 2003b), has been shown to be related to increased psychological well-being and lower depression in students of the social sciences, users of psychology websites and psychotherapy patients. The current study builds on the existing literature by examining the link between self-compassion and depressive symptomatology in a sample representative of the German general population (n = 2,404). The SCS subscales of self-judgment, isolation, and over-identification, and the “self-coldness”, composite score, which encompass these three negative subscales, consistently differed between subsamples of individuals without any depressive symptoms, with any depressive syndromes, and with major depressive disorder. The contribution of the positive SCS subscales of self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness to the variance in depressive symptomatology was almost negligible. However, when combined to a “self-compassion composite”, the positive SCS subscales significantly moderated the relationship between “self-coldness” and depressive symptoms in the general population. This speaks for self-compassion having the potential to buffer self-coldness related to depression—providing an argument for interventions that foster self-caring, kind, and forgiving attitudes towards oneself.

The development of compassionate engagement and action scales for self and others

“…We found that self-compassion, self-reassurance and the positive items of the Neff's scale are more strongly associated with well-being than psychopathology measures (Table 8) -a finding in line with other studies (e.g., [74]). This supports the growing awareness that positive ways of relating to oneself in contrast to threat or critical focused ways have very different impacts on well-being and mental health [47,119], physiology [105] and neurophysiology [80].…”

“…A study that supports this is Körner et al [74] who explored the contributions of the positive and negative factors of the SCS in 2404 people taken from the general population. They found that most of the variance on depression was accounted for by the negative SCS factors.…”

“…There is controversy over these constructs and their measurement particularly the combining of negative and positive items as a single measure and construct [15,74,81,90,101,120]. Indeed, one can be high on both or low on both and get the same score.…”

The Impact of Self-Criticism and Self-Reassurance on Weight-Related Affect and Well-Being in Participants of a Commercial Weight Management Programme

“…For example, Körner and colleagues [49] found that positive versus negative self-evaluations had contrasting effects on depression in a large population sample, with negative self-evaluation being the primary predictor of depression. Indeed, studies of positive and negative affect [50,51] indicate that positive affect and well-being, in contrast to negative affect and psychopathology, should perhaps be studied separately.…”

The relationship of self-compassion and depression: Cross-lagged panel analyses in depressed patients after outpatient therapy

“…Particularly relevant for the current research is the question whether an empirical association between (lack of) self-compassion and psychopathology may be inflated by the above-mentioned negative components of the SCS. As recently argued by Muris (2015) the composite of the negative components of the SCS, i.e., "Self-Coldness" (Gilbert et al, 2011;Körner et al, 2015) or "Uncompassion" (Neff, 2015), not only taps the true, protective nature of self-compassion but also non-compassionate mechanisms, such as rumination or self-criticism, that do not fit with the original definition of selfcompassion. To investigate such possible differential contributions of the positive and negative components of the SCS to the association with depressive symptoms, we perform separate analyses for the positive and negative subscales and compare the results with those obtained with the SCS total score.…”