The Research On Undergraduates' Self-Compassion And Its Relationship With Mental Health

Self-compassion is a potentially important, measurable quality that offers a conceptual alternative to other more egocentric concepts of self-related processes and feelings, such as self-esteem, and also offers an alternative approach to thinking about mental health. Self-compassion entails being kind and understanding toward oneself in instances of pain or failure rather than being harshly self-critical; perceiving one's experiences as part of the larger human experience rather than seeing them as isolating; and holding painful thoughts and feelings in mindful awareness rather than over-identifying with them. This study aims to develop an Undergraduates' Self-Compassion Questionnaire and use it to make an investigation in some universities.Based on summarizing the documents, the investigation of open-ended questionnaire, visiting the undergraduates and discussing with psychological experts, the theoretical hypothesis is constructed. According to it, the study designed a preliminary questionnaire on undergraduates' self-compassion. By the factor analysis of the informal questionnaire, we developed the formal questionnaire and verified its reliability and validity. We used the formal questionnaire to investigate undergraduates to find some characters of them and we test the structure of self-compassion by Structural Equation Model. At last, the relationship between self-compassion and mental health was generally investigated. The main results of this study are as follows:(1) The undergraduates' self-compassion is a multi-dimensional model. Six dimensions of self-compassion orientation of undergraduates are discussed: social adaptation, self-identity, self-kindness, self-acceptance, self-regulation, and emotional mindfulness. (2) On the base of the theoretical hypothesis, we form the elementary questionnaire and investigate 493 undergraduates. We develop the formal questionnaire by factor analysis. The index of reliability and validity is good. All of above shows the undergraduates' self-compassion questionnaire is a scale suitable to measure the undergraduates' self-compassion.(3) We use the formal questionnaire to survey 623 undergraduates from 6 universities. In the whole, the undergraduates' self-compassion is characteristic evidently. For some social demographic variables, such as gender, grade, major, the effect is statically significant in some dimensions.(4) Self-compassion is negatively correlated with indicators of mental abnormality. Results indicate that self-compassion is significantly correlated with positive mental health outcomes such as less depression and anxiety. The result is consistent with previous findings.