Browsing by Author "Pitkänen, Saara"

Objects. Self-compassion means kindness toward oneself, perceiving one’s experiences as a common event also for other people and accepting one’s own thoughts and emotions. The lack of self-compassion is manifested in self-criticism, isolation and over-identifying. Self-compassion is positive emotional attitude for oneself. It has been found that self-compassion predicts greater psychological well-being in adults. There are few studies with adolescents. The aim of this review is to gather studies about self-compassion that concerns adolescents and asses self-compassion as a developmental factor. It is thought that self-compassion may protect against negative effects of changes and challenges that happens in youth. Methods. The articles related to self-compassion were searched from database of PubMed, Google Scholar and Scopus. The age gap was from ten years to 19 years. Studies were published in the past five years. Results. In the studies concerning adolescents, self-compassion was associated with lower levers of depression, anxiety and social anxiety symptoms. The was also an association with increased curiosity, resilience and overall psychological well-being. Self-compassion was associated with decreased affective empathy and increased sense of community. Therefore, it may protect against distress resulted from affective empathy and increase social well-being. Higher levels of self-compassion were associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms and psychological maladjustment among bullying victims. Among nonsuicidal self-injury groups kindness toward oneself and feeling of common humanity may prevent self-destructive thoughts to proceed into self-destructive actions. Self-compassion moderated the link between harmful perfectionism and depressive symptoms because adolescents with higher self-compassion had fewer symptoms of depression compared to low levels of self-compassion. Therefore, self-compassion may mediate and moderate the link between other variables. Conclusions. The lack of self-compassion may cause or maintain emotional problems in youth. On the contrary, high self-compassion may improve well-being and buffer against challenges. The positive effects of self-compassion may extend into interpersonal relationships, too. Based on the research it appears that there are similar associations among adolescents than among adults but there is not enough systematic research concerning different topics. Many mental health disorders occur for the first time in youth and early interventions are important so interventions targeting self-compassion among adolescents could be important.