Compassion Protects Mental Health and Social Safeness During the COVID-19 Pandemic Across 21 Countries

Abstract

Objectives The COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented detrimental impact on mental health in people around the world. It is important therefore to explore factors that may buffer or accentuate the risk of mental health problems in this context. Given that compassion has numerous benefits for mental health, emotion regulation, and social relationships, this study examines the buffering effects of different flows of compassion (for self, for others, from others) against the impact of perceived threat of COVID-19 on depression, anxiety, and stress, and social safeness. Methods The study was conducted in a sample of 4057 adult participants from the general community population, collected across 21 countries from Europe, Middle East, North America, South America, Asia, and Oceania. Participants completed self-report measures of perceived threat of COVID-19, compassion (for self, for others, from others), depression, anxiety, stress, and social safeness. Results Perceived threat of COVID-19 was associated with higher scores in depression, anxiety, and stress, and lower scores in social safeness. Self-compassion and compassion from others were associated with lower psychological distress and higher social safeness. Compassion for others was associated with lower depressive symptoms. Self-compassion moderated the relationship between perceived threat of COVID-19 on depression, anxiety, and stress, whereas compassion from others moderated the effects of fears of contracting COVID-19 on social safeness. These effects were consistent across all countries. Conclusions Our findings highlight the universal protective role of compassion, in particular self-compassion and compassion from others, in promoting resilience by buffering against the harmful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health and social safeness. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12671-021-01822-2.

Fears of compassion magnify the harmful effects of threat of COVID‐19 on mental health and social safeness across 21 countries

“…In the current study, this hypothesis was supported with all three flows of fears of compassion predicting psychological distress (depression, anxiety and stress) and social safeness. This is consistent with previous findings that compassion as a multidimensional construct predicts psychological distress (Kirby et al, 2019) and social safeness (Kelly & Dupasquier, 2016) and is in accordance with a related study examining the flows of compassion in relation to COVID-19 (Matos, McEwan, et al, 2021).…”

“…This finding may again be related to the notion that during the COVID-19 pandemic, others have become threats, fuelling fears of contraction, and therefore inhibiting compassion involving contact with others, either receiving compassion from others or offering compassion to others, resulting in increased anxiety. This is consistent with findings from the related study (Matos, McEwan, et al, 2021) which found compassion for others did not moderate the relationship, and previous findings which have generally found that fears of compassion for others has less impact on psychological distress (Kirby et al, 2019).…”

“…This finding is consistent with Matos, McEwan, et al (2021) which found self-compassion moderated the impact of perceived threat of COVID-19 on psychological distress, and with finding that fears of self-compassion mediated the relationship between adverse events and depression and anxiety. Although our study found that fears of self-compassion significantly predicted diminished social safeness in the context of COVID-19, which is in line with previous research reporting fears of self-compassion to be negatively associated with social safeness (Kelly & Dupasquier, 2016), these fears did not moderate the impact of perceived threat of COVID-19 on social safeness.…”

“…Thus, it was hypothesized that fears of compassion for self and from others (more so than fears of compassion for others) would predict psychological distress (Kirby et al, 2019) and a lack of social safeness (Kelly & Dupasquier, 2016) during the pandemic. Indeed, in a related study (Matos, McEwan, et al, 2021) compassion for self and from others were highly associated with lower psychological distress and higher social safeness. In the current study, this hypothesis was supported with all three flows of fears of compassion predicting psychological distress (depression, anxiety and stress) and social safeness.…”

“…Indeed, in the context of COVID-19, both self-compassion as a unidimensional construct (Jiménez et al, 2020;Kavaklı et al, 2020;Li et al, 2021), and the flows of compassion as a multidimensional construct (Matos, McEwan, et al, 2021) have been shown to be protective factors against psychological distress. In the same multinational study across 21 countries as the current study, Matos, McEwan, et al (2021) found compassion for self was a reliable moderator between the perceived threat of COVID-19 and lower psychological distress. Whilst compassion from others was a consistent moderator between fears of contracting COVID-19 and higher social safeness.…”