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Mediation of Self-Compassion on Pathways from Stress and Anxiety to Depression among Portuguese Higher Education Students

Higher education is a context that requires students to develop academic, social and institutional tasks. As a result of this complex and multidimensional process, students tend to experience greater stress, anxiety and depression, making it crucial for students to mobilize a set of essential person...

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Autores principales: Serrão, Carla, Valquaresma, Andreia, Rodrigues, Ana Rita, Duarte, Ivone
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10530951/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37761691
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11182494
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author Serrão, Carla
Valquaresma, Andreia
Rodrigues, Ana Rita
Duarte, Ivone
author_facet Serrão, Carla
Valquaresma, Andreia
Rodrigues, Ana Rita
Duarte, Ivone
author_sort Serrão, Carla
collection PubMed
description Higher education is a context that requires students to develop academic, social and institutional tasks. As a result of this complex and multidimensional process, students tend to experience greater stress, anxiety and depression, making it crucial for students to mobilize a set of essential personal, social and instrumental resources, for a more positive adaptation to the academic context. Self-compassion is an adaptative emotion-regulation strategy and may help students to better adjust to academic issues. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of self-compassion as a mediator in the relationship between anxiety and depression, as well as stress and depression. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using an online questionnaire distributed through social media. Stress and anxiety were found to be positively related to depression scores and negatively related to self-compassion. A bootstrapped mediation model confirmed the existence of a significant positive partial mediation effect exerted by self-compassion on the relationship between stress and depression (b = 0.12, 95% CI [0.05, 0.18]). The analysis also showed a significant positive partial mediation effect exerted by self-compassion in the relationship between anxiety and depression (b = 0.13, 95% CI [0.08, 0.18]). Conclusions: Self-compassion might partially mediate the relationship between stress and depression and between anxiety and depression. Findings underscore self-compassion as a potentially protective factor against negative psychological symptoms.
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spelling pubmed-105309512023-09-28 Mediation of Self-Compassion on Pathways from Stress and Anxiety to Depression among Portuguese Higher Education Students Serrão, Carla Valquaresma, Andreia Rodrigues, Ana Rita Duarte, Ivone Healthcare (Basel) Article Higher education is a context that requires students to develop academic, social and institutional tasks. As a result of this complex and multidimensional process, students tend to experience greater stress, anxiety and depression, making it crucial for students to mobilize a set of essential personal, social and instrumental resources, for a more positive adaptation to the academic context. Self-compassion is an adaptative emotion-regulation strategy and may help students to better adjust to academic issues. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of self-compassion as a mediator in the relationship between anxiety and depression, as well as stress and depression. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using an online questionnaire distributed through social media. Stress and anxiety were found to be positively related to depression scores and negatively related to self-compassion. A bootstrapped mediation model confirmed the existence of a significant positive partial mediation effect exerted by self-compassion on the relationship between stress and depression (b = 0.12, 95% CI [0.05, 0.18]). The analysis also showed a significant positive partial mediation effect exerted by self-compassion in the relationship between anxiety and depression (b = 0.13, 95% CI [0.08, 0.18]). Conclusions: Self-compassion might partially mediate the relationship between stress and depression and between anxiety and depression. Findings underscore self-compassion as a potentially protective factor against negative psychological symptoms. MDPI 2023-09-08 /pmc/articles/PMC10530951/ /pubmed/37761691 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11182494 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Serrão, Carla
Valquaresma, Andreia
Rodrigues, Ana Rita
Duarte, Ivone
Mediation of Self-Compassion on Pathways from Stress and Anxiety to Depression among Portuguese Higher Education Students
title Mediation of Self-Compassion on Pathways from Stress and Anxiety to Depression among Portuguese Higher Education Students
title_full Mediation of Self-Compassion on Pathways from Stress and Anxiety to Depression among Portuguese Higher Education Students
title_fullStr Mediation of Self-Compassion on Pathways from Stress and Anxiety to Depression among Portuguese Higher Education Students
title_full_unstemmed Mediation of Self-Compassion on Pathways from Stress and Anxiety to Depression among Portuguese Higher Education Students
title_short Mediation of Self-Compassion on Pathways from Stress and Anxiety to Depression among Portuguese Higher Education Students
title_sort mediation of self-compassion on pathways from stress and anxiety to depression among portuguese higher education students
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10530951/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37761691
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11182494
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