Abstract
Self-compassion, being kind to oneself in difficult times, is a way of relating to oneself that promotes better mental health, but little is known about how self-compassion affects interpersonal relationships. The current study examined the association between self-compassion and adolescent depressive symptoms from an interpersonal perspective in different cultural contexts. Adolescents (N = 422/570, Mean age = 14.44/13.41, UK/China) completed questionnaires about their perceptions of their parents' behaviour towards them, self-compassion, friendships and depressive symptoms. Structural equation modelling revealed that positive parenting was positively associated with higher self-compassion, positive friendship quality, and with fewer depressive symptoms in both samples. Additionally, we confirmed a negative association between self-compassion and depressive symptoms. The pathway from positive parenting to lower depressive symptoms via higher self-compassion was also corroborated in both cultures. Contrary to our hypothesis, positive quality of friendship was associated with higher depressive symptoms in both countries. Conflicts were associated with more depressive symptoms in the Chinese sample only. There was evidence of a negative association between self-compassion and conflicts in the Chinese sample only. Finally, the direct association between self-compassion and depressive symptoms was greater in the UK sample, whereas in the Chinese sample, interpersonal factors were more strongly associated with self-compassion and depressive symptoms. Our findings suggest that self-compassion may be a useful therapeutic target to improve social functioning and mental health among adolescents and that it may be necessary to account for cross-cultural differences in interpersonal factors when designing psychological interventions.
Highlights
The prevalence of adolescent depressive symptoms is increasing worldwide (Collishaw, 2015), and it is crucial to develop interventions to target adolescent depression and reduce the associated societal burden (Herrman et al, 2019)
We proposed the examination of a developmental pathway model in which selfcompassion is shaped by positive parenting, which was defined and assessed as encompassing praise, involvement and good quality supervision, and in turn, influences close friendships that can be associated with youth depressive symptoms
Positive quality of friendships was positively associated with depressive symptoms, and self-compassion was not associated with the positive quality of friendships but associated with more conflicts
Summary
The prevalence of adolescent depressive symptoms is increasing worldwide (Collishaw, 2015), and it is crucial to develop interventions to target adolescent depression and reduce the associated societal burden (Herrman et al, 2019). Adolescence is an important transition period characterised by puberty onset, interpersonal relationship changes (i.e., the relationships with parents and peers) and the development of self (Steinberg & Morris, 2001) It is considered a time window of increased vulnerability for mental health problems, adolescence represents a window of opportunity for interventions that reduce the impact of risk factors and build resilience to future challenges (Collishaw, 2015). Self-compassion has been associated with increased prosocial behaviour (Marshall et al, 2020), lower physiological responses to social stressors (Bluth et al, 2016), less interpersonal aggression (Barry et al, 2015) and reduced peer victimisation (Jiang et al, 2016) None of these studies has focused on the association between self-compassion and the ability to form and maintain close friendships, which in the current study was defined and assessed by fewer conflicts and higher levels of support and intimate disclosure.
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