Abstract
ObjectivesThe COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented detrimental impact on mental health in people around the world. It is important therefore to explore factors that may buffer or accentuate the risk of mental health problems in this context. Given that compassion has numerous benefits for mental health, emotion regulation, and social relationships, this study examines the buffering effects of different flows of compassion (for self, for others, from others) against the impact of perceived threat of COVID-19 on depression, anxiety, and stress, and social safeness.MethodsThe study was conducted in a sample of 4057 adult participants from the general community population, collected across 21 countries from Europe, Middle East, North America, South America, Asia, and Oceania. Participants completed self-report measures of perceived threat of COVID-19, compassion (for self, for others, from others), depression, anxiety, stress, and social safeness.ResultsPerceived threat of COVID-19 was associated with higher scores in depression, anxiety, and stress, and lower scores in social safeness. Self-compassion and compassion from others were associated with lower psychological distress and higher social safeness. Compassion for others was associated with lower depressive symptoms. Self-compassion moderated the relationship between perceived threat of COVID-19 on depression, anxiety, and stress, whereas compassion from others moderated the effects of fears of contracting COVID-19 on social safeness. These effects were consistent across all countries.ConclusionsOur findings highlight the universal protective role of compassion, in particular self-compassion and compassion from others, in promoting resilience by buffering against the harmful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health and social safeness.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12671-021-01822-2.
Highlights
This is consistent with previous studies which have revealed that fears of COVID-19 are associated to mental health difficulties (e.g., Ahorsu et al, 2020; Bitan et al, 2020; Fitzpatrick et al, 2020; Kanovsky & Halamová, 2020; Matos et al, 2021)
Given that previous studies have demonstrated the buffering effect of self-compassion against psychological distress (Blackie & Kocovski, 2019; Heath et al, 2018; Luo et al, 2018; Oliveira et al, 2018; Wong et al, 2016), including in the context of COVID-19 (Jimenez et al, 2020; Kavakli et al, 2020; Lau et al, 2020; Li et al, 2021), it was hypothesized that self-compassion would be a protective factor and significant moderator between the perceived threat of COVID-19 and depression, anxiety, and stress
This hypothesis was supported and self-compassion was found to significantly predict lower psychological distress in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This means that individuals who were able to be compassionate towards themselves presented fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress
Summary
The research sample was gathered from 23 different countries. We excluded the data from Peru (N = 16) and Uruguay (N = 23) due to small sample size. The total sample consisted of 21 countries with 4057 participants, mean age 41.45 (SD = 14.96), with 80.8% (N = 3279) women, 18.2% (N = 739) men, 0.4% (N = 15) other, and 0.6% (N = 24) preferred not to respond. For demographic details per country, see Table 1
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