Abstract
Self-compassion recognises a meaning of life’s suffering, aligning with existential positive psychology. Although this construct is known to protect our mental health, how to augment self-compassion remains to be evaluated. Social work students suffer from high rates of mental health problems; however, research into self-compassion in this population remains to be developed. This study aimed to evaluate (i) relationships between self-compassion and more traditional positive constructs—resilience, engagement and motivation, and (ii) differences of these constructs between the levels of studies to inform how self-compassion can be enhanced in social work students. A total of 129 Irish social work students completed self-report scales regarding self-compassion, resilience, engagement and motivation. Correlation, regression and one-way MANOVA were conducted. Self-compassion was associated with gender, age, resilience, engagement and intrinsic motivation. Resilience and intrinsic motivation were significant predictors of self-compassion. There was no significant difference in the levels of these constructs between the levels of studies. Findings suggest that social work educators across different levels can strengthen students’ resilience and intrinsic motivation to cultivate the students’ self-compassion. Moreover, the close relationships between self-compassion, resilience and intrinsic motivation indicate that orienting students to the meaning of the studies helps their mental health.
Highlights
Similar to self-compassion [42], meaningfulness was associated with post-traumatic growth [43]. These findings suggest both self-compassion and Existential PositivePsychology (EPP) are especially helpful for the mental health of social work students
Self-compassion was positively associated with gender, age, resilience, engagement and intrinsic motivation, whereas it was not associated with extrinsic motivation and amotivation
We were interested in examining the relationships between the more traditional positive constructs used in this research, how these variables differ between the levels of studies, and how self-compassion can be enhanced in social work students
Summary
Self-compassion is aligned with Existential Positive Psychology (EPP) in that it recognises the suffering inherent in living while finding meaning and connection with others in that suffering. Professional social workers are generally self-compassionate; levels vary significantly according to a variety of factors, including health and education level [9,10]. These findings indicate a need to increase self-compassion among all social workers by understanding self-compassion and incorporating it in social work education [12]
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