Relationship between self compassion and substance use risk among university students

Self-compassion، that is a new concept in personality psychology، is defined as being careful and compassionate for oneself in hardships and life difficulties. Relations of this construct with some heath and illness indexes had been showed in previous researches. Giving the importance of this variable in maintenance and enhancement of people health، this study was conducted to investigate the relationship between self-compassion and the risk of substance use at university students. Among the students of Mohaghegh Ardabil University at 2012-2013 educational year، one hundred students were select randomly and were asked to complete the questionnaires of substance use risk and self-compassions. The gathered data were analyzed by Pearson correlation and multivariate regression test. Result showed that substance use risk negatively correlated to self-kindness (r=-0/24; p<0/02) and common humanity (r=-0/27; p<0/01) but positively related to isolation (r=0/33; p<0/004). The result of regression analyses showed that self-compassion components explain 26% of variance of substance use risk. These results support the protective role of self-compassion against substance use.